


Mission: Avengers

by ChibiDawn23



Series: Mission: Avengers [2]
Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28701621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiDawn23/pseuds/ChibiDawn23
Summary: "Climbing 130-story windows, nuclear missiles and stolen launch codes seemed so...tame...compared to Clint's job." When Loki takes over Clint's mind, Agent William Brandt joins the Avengers to get his brother back and save the world...Again.
Series: Mission: Avengers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2103894
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Baltimore, Maryland**

_BLAM. . BLAM._

_Ten-year old William Brandt, "Will" to all his friends, carefully set the smoking pistol down and uncovered his ears. He looked up at his father expectantly. Donald Brandt was grinning from ear to ear. It was infectious, and Will found himself grinning goofily back. He loved days like this. Dad worked the late shift tonight at the precinct, and so the afternoon was Dad time. Yesterday they'd finished the treehouse in the backyard. Today, against Laura Brandt's better judgment, they were at the shooting range. Dad was in uniform, his shiny gold badge on his chest and the BALTIMORE POLICE DEPARTMENT patch on his sleeve. Will was proud of his dad. All the guys thought it was awesome that his dad was a cop._

_Even more awesome that he let him shoot a gun. A real one. Not a BB gun, but an actual Sig Sauer handgun. With real bullets, not rubber ones. "Reel it in," Will commanded, and Don laughed._

_"No patience," Don's partner of just three days, Patrick McConnell, chuckled. "Just like his old man."_

_"Says the guy who has to pace the bullpen while his computer loads in the morning," Don countered with a laugh._

_"Damn thing's a dinosaur," Pat muttered under his breath to Will, and Will smiled. "Come on already Don, I wanna see if he's as good as you say." Having just transferred from Norfolk, all anyone at the precinct could talk about was Donald Brandt's son and his uncanny aim._

_"Better," Don said proudly, ruffling Will's hair. "He's better." Will glowed as his dad pressed the button that brought the paper target up to the ledge. He rolled up the sleeves on his red t-shirt and rocked back on his sneaker heels. Will didn't need to look. He ducked under his father's arm and into the stall next door._

_Don pointed at the target. Patrick studied the black silhouette._

_He laughed. "One hit?" he asked Don, nodding at the round hole in the target's head._

_"Six," Don corrected._

_Patrick's smile faded. "What?"_

_Don tapped the hole in the paper as he counted. "One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six."_

_Will hadn't missed. He'd put the next five shots in the first hole._

_"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Patrick breathed. He looked at Don. "I've never seen anybody with that good a shot. Have you?"_

_Don shrugged. "Just one other," he said._

_Patrick raised an eyebrow. "Who's that? Annie Oakley?"_

_Don only smiled and jerked a thumb at the stall next door. Patrick frowned as he leaned around the divider. Will was standing next to an identical figure in a black shirt and jeans. The boy held a compound bow and a quiver of arrows, and was taking aim at a target on the back wall. Patrick watched in silence as the boy nocked an arrow, took a deep breath, exhaled, and let the arrow fly-and it buried itself neatly in a cluster of arrows around the target's heart._

_"Holy Christ, Don, there's two of them?" Patrick's jaw dropped as Will's twin brother Clint, older by all of two minutes, set the bow down and turned around. The boys were identical, right down to their father's blue eyes, the owly cowlick and their grins at the look on their father's partner's face._

_And, apparently...their aim. "So when they talk about your son and his aim at the office...which one are they bragging about?" Patrick questioned, dumbfounded._

_Don grinned as he put his arms around their shoulders. "That's my boys," he said proudly, and both boys smiled._

* * *

**NEW MEXICO-PRESENT DAY**

He was bored.

The glowing blue box known as the Tesseract spouted blue wispy flames and sucked the electricity periodically from the underground chamber. Something was _definitely_ happening , but since Selvig didn't have a clue what was going on, and the artifact hadn't exploded, grown, shrunk, or started singing, SHIELD Agent Clint Barton was wary, but mostly….bored.

This felt like a short straw assignment to him. "Here, Hawkeye, watch this blue box and make sure no little green men pop out," he muttered quietly under his breath as he rested his head on his arms on the railing. His gun rested at his hip as he looked down from the catwalk above the lab.

Clint had been here for almost a month while Dr. Erik Selvig, a renowned physicist, poked and prodded the Tesseract. At first, he'd stayed at ground level, casting a suspicious glance at every lab tech that was given clearance on Phase 2, every SHIELD scientist that came in to assist the brilliant doctor with his tests on the shiny blue Norse cube. That had lasted all of a week or so, and then he'd retreated to a perch above the lab on the catwalk. He could see everything, read the lips of everyone in the room, every glance…and he wasn't much of a people person, anyway. There was one tech in particular that he'd heard call him, "creepy." He'd taken it as a compliment.

Director Fury had caught him one day up on the catwalk and chewed his ass. "Your job is to keep a _close_ eye on that cube and everyone in this room."

"This _is_ a close eye," he'd argued. After a couple times of this, Fury seemed to have given up pestering him.

For the first three weeks, nothing had happened. The box sat in its cradle and pulsated blue. There were days when Clint wished something _would_ pop out of it. At least then he'd have something to shoot.

Tonight, the Tesseract was "misbehaving." That's what Selvig called it. It threatened to overload their circuits. Selvig ordered the power turned off, plunging the room into darkness. It took half a second for Clint's eyes to adjust to the eerie blue glow. And then the Tesseract glowed bright, and the lights all came back on. Selvig had spoken to Agent Phil Coulson, and Coulson had ordered a precautionary evac from the Project Dark Energy base. They didn't know how powerful the Tesseract was, and Coulson didn't want to chance any unnecessary casualties. Clint heard helicopters and humvees periodically from outside. He could also hear the calm evacuation orders over the intercom, but he was assigned to the Cube, and that's where he'd stay until ordered otherwise.

He saw Fury come into the lab, but made no effort to look busy. _He wanted me to keep an eye on things...I'm keeping eyes on things._ He saw Fury ask Selvig where he was, and grinned at Selvig's answer. "The Hawk? Up in his nest." He jerked a thumb up at Clint, and Fury's eyes-or rather, _eye_ \- connected with him. _Looks_ half _pissed_ , Clint noted, hiding a smile. His superior didn't appreciate that particular joke. Fury stood below him and crossed his arms over his black turtleneck and coat as he motioned for Clint to join them on the ground. Clint reached up, grabbing hold of a rappelling rope and swinging a leg over the railing. He rappelled down and landed easily in front of Fury. "You're supposed to be keeping an eye on the Tesseract," Fury berated him, yet again.

"I see better from a distance," Clint told him, yet again. Fury had hired him as a sniper for a reason. Apparently he'd forgotten. He followed Fury over to the blue cube. "If there's any tampering, it's coming from the other side," Clint informed his boss.

"The other side?" Fury clarified, and Clint nodded.

"Well, this thing is an interstellar door, right?" When Fury nodded, Clint tossed a thumb at the Tesseract. "So….doors open both ways…"

And then the cube exploded, shooting tendrils of what Clint thought looked like lightning into the room as the light shot into the ceiling, then banked across the ceiling up to the platform. It expanded, and grew, swirling into a circle. The light grew so bright Clint wished he was carrying his SHIELD issue sunglasses, and then imploded.

A figure knelt on the platform. Dark robes. Wild hair. He held a long gold staff in one hand. And when he looked up at Fury and the rest of the room's occupants…he smiled.

 _Not a "we come in peace" smile,_ Clint thought as he stood, his fingers twitching over his pistol. _Man do I wish I had my bow on me..._

"Sir!" Fury's voice boomed from next to him. "Put down the spear."

 _Yeah, right_ , Clint thought. _Like that's gonna work._ His muscles tensed, and he shoved Fury out of the way before the first burst of blue-lightning, maybe?-came shooting towards the director. He threw himself over Fury, one eye on the man on the platform. Except this was no man. Agent Hall had just fired four shots at the guy-and they almost seemed to bounce off. And when he leapt off the platform and drove his glowing staff into the chest of one of the agents, Clint knew there was something _seriously_ wrong about this guy. He fired four shots and didn't get a single hit- _that_ was highly unusual. He _never_ missed. But he knew he'd hit him it was just….nothing happened. Like the guy was bulletproof or something.

Suddenly, he was right in front of him. Clint threw his arm back for a punch, but whoever this was snatched his arm out of the air and bent it backwards. Clint cried out in surprise. "You have heart," the being said to him with a snakelike hiss. "I can use that."

The instant the point of the glowing staff touched his chest, Clint felt something wedge its way inside him. A hissing voice with a touch of ice and frost. " _It is useless to fight_ ," the voice hissed as it wrapped itself around his mind. It physically hurt. Clint gasped from the shock. His mind raced, wishing he could reach for his gun, but unable to make his fingers move. " _I am Loki of Asgard._ _You are mine to rule_ ," the hiss continued, sending icy tendrils up and down his spine. Clint felt the ice permeate his memories as the being dug through them, pulling files on SHIELD, on Fury...on Natasha...and his family. One image flitted across his mind, and he tried to shove it out of Loki's path. The icy voice chuckled. " _You have no secrets from me, Agent Barton. I know everything about you_. _Including that you have a brother...and that you feel more for your partner than you readily admit..._ "

Clint wanted to scream in protest, to swear, to cuss Loki out, to gain back his mind. But the icy hiss shoved Clint Barton to the wayside, into a corner of his mind where he could only watch in agony as new images filled his subconscious.

It felt like hours, but it had been mere seconds. Clint was gone...


	2. An Explosive Situation

_Wellington, New Zealand_

"Target in sight." Green glanced at her watch. "Right on schedule." She raised her eyes. "Go ahead Blue, he's yours."

The man who sat down on the bench next to Blue had wire-rimmed glasses, snow-white hair and a full beard. He wore slacks and a tie, and in his arms he clutched a briefcase as if his life depended on it. Actually, it really did. If he dropped it, he and the bench and a half block would go up in a fiery wave of death. Actually, that was going to happen anyway, in about fifteen minutes, unless…

"Is your name Dr. Clark Wheeler?"

The white-haired man was so nervous he almost dropped the briefcase then and there, and Blue held his breath as he heard Green and White suck in a breath in his earpiece. "Take it easy, Dr. Wheeler," the stranger sitting next to him said, casually flipping through the _Dominion Post_. "We're here to help you." He glanced over the top of the newspaper, his brown eyes alert. "T-minus eleven minutes," he said aloud, seemingly to no one.

"W-who are you talking to?" Wheeler managed to gasp out.

"Not you," he replied gently. "Just stay calm. Green, any sign of party crashers?"

In his ear, he heard Agent Jane Carter whisper, "No eyes," from a bagel shop across the street.

"White?"

"Nothing suspicious," Agent Benji Dunn reported from a flower delivery shop van down the way. "Looks like he's alone."

"Red, have you located the trigger yet?"

Ethan Hunt's response was terse. "Working on it."

_I'm sitting next to enough C4 to blow me halfway to Sydney._ Special Agent William Brandt shoved the thought from his mind and tried to keep his breathing steady so he wouldn't alarm Wheeler. "All right, here's the plan, Doc," he whispered. "My team is here to get you home to your family, all right?"

Wheeler nodded, his face white. "My family…th-they-"

"They're fine, Doc. Our team found them. They can't hold that over your head anymore."

Tears streamed down the doctor's face as he processed that fact. "Do you know how to defuse the bomb?" Brandt asked him. They'd been banking on the fact that once Wheeler was safe (and alone), they'd be able to disarm the bomb in his hands.

But Wheeler was shaking his head. "The handle…it's pressure sensitive. If I let go, the bomb explodes."

"If they're not here in person, how are they watching you?" Brandt asked him.

Wheeler's eyes drifted down to the flower in his buttonhole. "Camera," he said.

"No audio?"

"No. It's more fun for them to watch," Wheeler replied miserably. "They don't care who I talk to...and begging them not to do this didn't seem to do much good, anyway."

_Shit_. From now on, all backup plans had backup plans.

Two minutes to five. "OK Doc, new plan," Brandt said. "Benji, get your ass over here. _Now_."

"….What?"

"Just _do_ it!" Brandt tossed his paper aside and wrenched the briefcase from Wheeler's hands. His fingers closed around the pressure trigger just as Wheeler's fingers were pried loose. Wheeler almost collapsed in a heap as the briefcase exchanged hands. "Run," Brandt told Wheeler, his fingers curling around the case. The briefcase's trigger had a delay. He hadn't been sure if it did or not. _Good guess, Brandt._

"But-"

" _Go_!" Brandt yelled as Benji roared up next to them. Brandt threw himself in the passenger seat as Benji floored the van and they shot forward.

"What'd you bring _that_ along for?" Benji asked, wide eyed, at the briefcase in his teammate's hand.

"Eyes on the road and drive like hell, Benji," Brandt gritted his teeth. "We need to get out of range of those people." Benji flew through an intersection. "And for God's sake don't crash us into anything!"

"Picky, picky," Benji shot back, sarcasm trying to calm his nerves. He looked at the GPS on the laptop set up between them. "There," Brandt said, nodding. "The bay. Drive. Faster. Now."

One minute to five. "Where's Ethan?" Brandt asked.

"Making sure DeForest can't detonate remotely," he heard Ethan's voice growl in his ear. "Way to stick with the plan, Brandt."

"If they could, they'd have done it the second the briefcase changed hands," Brandt pointed out, but Ethan didn't hear him. In his earpiece, he could hear the sound of a _very_ pissed off woman, and knuckles on skin. _Sounds like DeForest found him…._

"If we live through this I'm giving him hell for getting beat up by a girl," Brandt mumbled. Ahead, he could see a dark circle of black water. _Thirty seconds_ … Benji blew through a fence, past a loading dock.

"Twenty seconds. Get as close to the edge of the water as you can get," Brandt instructed. _Oh God I hope this works_. He mentally counted down the seconds in his head.

At _Five_ , he whipped open the passenger side door and threw the briefcase out into the water. At _One_ , the bomb inside the briefcase exploded underwater, sending a shockwave rippling through the harbor, blowing Benji, Brandt and the delivery van nose first into the pavement, launching it sideways, and sending it skidding on its side past two eighteen wheelers and into a concrete storage building.

As Benji carefully extricated himself from the mangled van, clutching several broken ribs with the arm that wasn't completely useless, he realized that Brandt was nowhere to be seen. "Brandt?" he asked aloud. "Will?"

"Benji what the _hell_ just happened?" That was Ethan, who must have finally gained the upper hand.

"I'll get back to you on that," Benji said as he took off at a half-limp, half-run toward the water.

That's when he saw the unmoving figure floating facedown in the water. " _Will_!" Benji screamed. "Ethan, we need medical assistance. _Now_."

He stood helplessly at the water's edge. No way could he get out there with only one good arm. Then he saw a few of the dock workers coming to investigate the explosion. "Hey! Over here! There's a man, out there, he's not moving!"

At first, they were in too much shock at Benji's condition, at the van, at their tipped over equipment. " _Move_ , damn you!" Benji yelled at them, waving with his one good arm, and wincing at the pain that ripped through his chest. They got the hint, and several of them jumped into the water and went after Brandt.

Ethan and Jane pulled in a few moments later. Jane was in perfect condition, having stolen a moped from outside the bookstore and flooring it after the van to keep the two agents in view. She'd been around a corner when the briefcase bomb had exploded. Ethan was sporting three long fingernail gouges down the right side of his face. Both of them stared, their jaws dropped, at the sight of Benji arguing with a paramedic about his arm, and the oxygen mask over Brandt's face as they were putting him in the back of an ambulance. Ethan took in the chaos the bomb had created, and was thankful there hadn't been any casualties. _Except for maybe Brandt_ …He forced the thought from his mind and he and Jane made their way over to Benji. "Are you-" Jane began.

"I'm not, and I'll thank you not to finish that question," Benji barked, then yelped as the paramedic snapped his shoulder back into place.

Ethan had wandered over to the paramedics who were just closing the door on the back of the ambulance Brandt was in. "Is he okay?" he asked one of the men with PARAMEDIC emblazoned across a reflective stripe on the back of his jacket.

"Unconscious. Barely breathing. Broken ribs, concussion…it's a wonder he made it out of the water." The paramedic frowned. "Who're you?"

"His brother," Ethan lied smoothly. "And I'm riding with him." The New Zealander paused, and Ethan mentally prepared the argument, ready to resort to fisticuffs if necessary to get inside that ambulance.

The paramedic shrugged. "Why not? Hop in." He studied Ethan. "You want me to stitch those for you?"

Ethan climbed into the back of the ambulance and crawled in."They'll be fine. Just help _him_." Brandt looked like hell. He hardly recognized his teammate through the blood and medical equipment. "You did good, buddy," Ethan whispered to him. "Just stick with us a little longer."


	3. The Man Who Knew Too Much

This was it.

_I shoulda stayed an analyst_.

The job had finally killed him. His luck had finally run out. He expected to open his eyes in hell, to see hellfire, brimstone and Satan himself.

_Beep_.

He frowned. Did they have hospitals in hell?

_Beep. Beep_.

He cautiously opened one eye. He was greeted with the smell of antiseptic and the glaring color of hospital green. And standing at the foot of his bed wasn't Satan, but definitely the _last_ person he'd ever thought he'd see.

Or maybe it _was_ Satan, from what Clint had told him.

"Agent William Brandt?" The tall black man with the eyepatch clarified, and Brandt nodded.

"What's left of him, anyway," he said dryly. Commander Nick Fury didn't seem to find it funny. Brandt had never met Clint's boss. Clint had said he didn't have much of a sense of humor. That, apparently, was a fair assessment. "What brings you to New Zealand?"

Fury closed the door and crossed his arms over his chest. Brandt wasn't afraid to admit it. He was intimidated. Fury towered over him, and the one eye was glaring at him so intently that Brandt wondered if he could read minds or see into his soul. _Hey, in their line of work….anything's possible_.

"We were hoping you were him," Fury said finally. Brandt raised an eyebrow.

"He's been working with you ten years, and you guys can't tell him from me?"

"Forty-one year old American white male, five foot nine, brown hair, brown eyes, checks into a hospital in New Zealand under the name 'John Smith'?" Fury pointed out. "We had a 50/50 shot."

Brandt considered this. "Fine. Why are you looking for my brother? Obviously it's been established that I'm not him…" Instantly, Brandt knew something was wrong. The feeling hit him in his gut harder than the explosion Fury came looking for his brother and found him, normally Fury would probably have turned around and walked back out again. And yet he was here... His face visibly paled. "Where's my brother?" he asked Fury. On the heart monitor, his pulse picked up pace.

"Your brother has been...compromised," Fury told him.

Brandt raised an eyebrow. "'Compromised'?" he repeated. "What exactly is that SHIELD bullshit code for?"

"How much has your brother told you about his...line of work?" Fury asked instead.

Brandt paused. This question was a trap. He could get Clint in trouble for this, serious trouble, but if Fury was asking, he probably already knew... "Enough," Brandt replied. "How about you quit with the superhero crap and tell me what the hell is going on?" He shouldn't be yelling. It made his head hurt worse.

Fury seemed to agree. "Your brother was in charge of a team that was protecting an asset known as the Tesseract. Three days ago, someone stole this asset."

An image popped into Brandt's head, from a long time ago. "Was it Loki?" Brandt asked.

Fury glanced at him. "How do you know about Loki?" he asked the agent.

_I'm right. Holy shit._ Brandt looked him in the eye. "Clint is good at keeping secrets, but not from me."

* * *

_Baltimore, one year ago_

_He pulled up in a boring Buick. The neighborhood still looked the same. His dad had cut down the ash in the front yard by the sidewalk. Tuckers dog was still a pain in the ass. "Shut up!" he yelled at it, and smiled when Mrs. Tucker waved from the porch. "Good to see you, Mrs. Tucker!" he called across the street. Maribell Tucker was like a grandma to him, but that little yipping Beanie Baby she called a dog was as big a pain in the ass now as it had been when he was growing up._ That dumb dog is gonna outlive me, _he thought to himself._

" _Good to see you home!" the little old lady called back. "How long this time?"_

_He counted in his head. "Three days," he replied._

" _You know your folks miss you something terrible when you boys aren't around," she told him. "But we sure are proud of you two."_

_Brandt chuckled. "Thank you, Mrs. Tucker." He shouldered his overnight bag and made his way up the driveway. He only got part way before his mother was out the door and in his arms, wrapping him in a hug. "Will!" Laura said happily. "We weren't expecting you!" She lowered her voice. "Must have been close by?"_

_He nodded. "Very," he said. He stole a glance in the garage. A gray Kawasaki was parked next to their father's Silverado. "Clint's home too?" he said in surprise. It was a rare day when both of them graced their parents' presence at the same time._

" _Got in a couple hours ago," she replied. She hadn't let go of his hand, and Brandt had noticed._ Clint must've been in something bad _, he thought. His mother got the deathgrip every time one or the other of them showed up looking a little worse for the wear. In this case, it had to have been Clint. He let her hold on and rubbed her back with his other hand, hugging her again. "Where is he?" Brandt asked._

" _Your room," she replied. "I'm making ravioli for supper."_

" _You knew I was coming," he teased her, and she smiled. "Call it mother's intuition," she explained._

" _I've always believed in it. Dad working?"_

_She nodded. "But he'll be home for supper." She grinned brightly. "All my boys will be home for supper."_

" _You want some help?" he asked her._

_Laura shook her head. "Go on and rest up. You've got about an hour."_

_Mom painted. It was the first thing he noticed when he stepped into the kitchen. It used to be a boring eggshell white. Everything was a sunny yellow, accenting the dark wood cabinets. She painted a flower backsplash-all by hand, if he knew his mother, behind the counters. The marinara for the ravioli was bubbling, and he stuck a finger in it quick to give it a try. "Get your fingers out of that sauce!" his mother scolded from the other room, and he flushed. Like being seven years old again with his fingers stuck in the cookie jar. He transferred his bag to his other hand as he went up the stairs and tossed the bag directly onto the stomach of the person reading a book on the bottom bunk. Said person grunted in annoyance._

" _Asshole," Clint said by way of greeting as he twisted his body so the bag dropped to the floor-on the other side of the bed. He wore blue jeans and a black T-shirt. He'd come to favor the color a lot lately._

" _Hi Clint," Brandt said with a laugh. "Watcha reading?" He came around the bunks, smacking his brother's knees with an open hand as he picked up his bag and tossed it on the top bunk. He rolled the desk chair over to the bed and propped his feet on the ladder. Mom kept the room the same. The Brandts had never been able to afford much on a cop and a librarian's salary, so Clint and Will had shared bunkbeds up until they graduated. Clint's bottom bunk was plastered with comic book pages and drawings of cars. Brandt had an autographed photo of the three original Charlie's Angels and some photos of him and his father. "That's a real book with real words, not a Playboy," he noted with a teasing grin. "You've advanced."_

" _It has lots of pictures," Clint drawled as he set it down. Brandt stole a glance at the cover. "The Norse Encyclopaedia?" he asked his brother, raising an eyebrow._

_Clint glanced over at him, and Brandt caught the fading black eye and minor nicks and scrapes right away. "You okay?" Brandt asked him, and Clint nodded._

" _Good to go," he replied. "You should see the other guy."_

_Considering the 'other guy' could be any number of strange things, Brandt decided he didn't want to see it. "What're you doing home?"_

" _In transit," he replied. "Got a flight to Albuquerque tomorrow."_

" _New Mexico?" Brandt asked. "The hell's in New Mexico?"_

_In response, Clint tapped the book he'd been reading._

_Brandt raised an eyebrow. "You're screwing with me, right?"_

_Clint just shrugged. "Mom give you the deathgrip?" he asked, sliding into an upright position on the bed and throwing a foot onto the floor. "She almost had a heart attack when she saw me." He frowned. "I feel bad. I hate making her worry."_

" _Well you know, we are off serving our country everyday…" Brandt pointed out, and Clint grinned. Mrs. Tucker had said the same thing to him as well. Their parents were the only ones who knew the true nature of their lines of work. Everyone else thought they were Special Ops. "You don't know_ how _special," their father liked to joke._

_Brandt picked up the book from beside Clint's leg and ran a thumb over the cover. "What did you get yourself mixed up in this time?" he asked. "You're going to New Mexico and you're reading up on Norse mythology?"_

" _Research," Clint replied. From downstairs, their mother called them both for dinner. "You oughta read about the two guys in Chapter Five," he said to his brother. He climbed off the bottom bunk. "They remind me of some guys I used to know…" He disappeared down the hall and Brandt heard him thunder down the stairs._

_Brandt threaded his way through the book to Chapter Five. "Thor, the God of Thunder, and Loki, the Trickster," he read aloud. He narrowed his eyes. Norse gods. No way…_

* * *

He sat up, ignoring the shooting pain in his ribs and skull. "What happened to my brother, Commander Fury?"

"Your brother's mind has been taken control of by Loki. In essence...your brother is working for the greatest enemy Earth has ever known."

Brandt's mind was reeling... "There has to be a way to snap him out of it," he said. "Some way to break the mind control." _Oh God, Clint...what did you get yourself into?_

"To do that, Agent Brandt, we have to find him first." Fury explained. "Loki's whereabouts are currently unknown."

Brandt closed his eyes, his analyst's mind going to work. "Obviously where Loki is, his underlings...and Clint...will be there too," he said. "Loki will make himself known, and SHIELD will go after him." He said this as normally as if he was asking the last good book Fury had read. _Apparently it wasn't The Norse Encyclopaedia._

"How do you know he'll make an appearance?" Fury asked him.

"He's a supervillain with aspirations of world domination," Brandt shrugged. "I read comic books as a kid." _And we know that's how they roll in my line of work…_ He looked at Fury. "And when he does, I want to be there."

"No way in hell," Fury barked. "I don't need some civilian analyst along for the ride."

Brandt glared at him. "You wouldn't be standing here still if you didn't want me. No- what you need is someone who won't pull the trigger on my brother the first chance they get. Maybe seeing me will snap him out of it. Or...maybe it'll confuse him for a second and then Natasha or someone can subdue him." His mention of the redheaded agent that was Clint's partner got Fury's attention. Clint was so dead if he got out of this. He shouldn't know about Natasha Romanoff, but Clint talked about his partner all the time. Brandt swung his legs off the bed. "I'm coming with you, Director Fury."

"You think so?" Fury took a step toward the bed. Brandt matched him. The two glared at each other. Neither one moved an inch.

"I'm the best chance you got of bringing him in one piece and you know it," Brandt said. "I'm coming."

"You're as big a pain in the ass as your brother," Fury told him. It wasn't a compliment.

"Runs in the family," Brandt agreed with him. He stood up.

Fury noted the IMF agent was moving sluggishly. "I don't have all day Agent Brandt," he said. "You have five minutes."

Brandt straightened, shoving the dizziness in his head and the pain in his ribs aside. "I'll be ready in two."

* * *

He was in jeans and a t-shirt in one. He glanced into the waiting room. Ethan, Jane and Benji were zoned out on the chairs, exhausted. Brandt shouldered his bag and followed Fury to a waiting SUV. Ethan was going to be furious with him when he woke up and realized he bailed. But his brother needed him. And his team would be okay without him. In fact, his biggest worry was Jane finding out he'd skipped out on treatment with four broken ribs and a busted face.

Until he climbed into the black Suburban and realized exactly what he was getting himself into.

And suddenly Jane was the least of his worries.


	4. Suspending Reality

It was the smoothest ride he'd ever had in anything that flew. The contraption known as a "Quinjet" he was currently strapped into was…beautiful. He barely heard the engines, barely felt the wind buffeting the sleek skin of the machine. "This thing is incredible," he told Fury, the first words he'd spoken since leaving Wellington.

"Yeah it is," Fury agreed. "Despite his mouth and his big head, he does good work."

Brandt raised an eyebrow. "Who does?"

"Tony Stark," Fury replied.

_Of course_. If there was someone to include on this elite team of superheroes, it would be the self-proclaimed "Iron Man," billionaire Tony Stark. Brandt had been glued to his television in Tehran when Tony Stark had gone missing in Afghanistan. He'd been to the Smithsonian numerous times, being from Baltimore, to see Howard Stark's prototype flying car. The guy was like Sir Richard Branson, but with a more ego. And he'd been in Sydney when the local television news station had captured Stark at the Expo at the opening ceremony with his grand entrance in the flying suit and the Victoria's Secret models wearing slightly slinkier versions of it. It had all been awesome, and Brandt wondered how much of the IMF technology had the stamp of Stark Industries on the microchips. Some of the stuff they had was so out of this world it was hard to believe that Stark _hadn't_ had a hand in it.

"Coming up on the carrier," the pilot of the jet announced, and Brandt blinked. "Carrier?"

Fury nodded. "Managed to save this one from a Navy scrapyard….gave it a serious facelift."

Brandt glanced down. The flight deck loomed below them. "Looks like an aircraft carrier to me," he noted.

Fury smiled. "In our line of work, not everything is as it appears on the surface," he said. "Agent Romanoff will brief you on your brother's situation," he told him, turning serious. "She's waiting on the bridge for you."

_Natasha_. Clint had talked about Natasha before, mostly in a "she saved my ass" capacity. He'd always wanted to meet Clint's mysterious partner. Brandt felt the jet touch lightly down on the deck- _this thing is capable of vertical landing and takeoff. Benji would be loving this_ \- and he dug for a pair of sunglasses before he followed Fury out on the deck.

* * *

His brother was right...

Agent Natasha Romanoff was _hot_.

And scary looking.

No wonder his brother'd never asked her out. She came out onto the flight deck in a black leather jacket and jeans. Her hair was shorter than the picture Clint had showed him, but this was Natasha Romanoff. The infamous Black Widow.

"You're Nat?" he asked, before Fury could introduce them. She was the one person in this flying circus he actually knew. Or at least felt like he did. She was also the only other person that Brandt knew wouldn't try to shoot his brother on sight. That made her an instant ally in his book.

Natasha blinked at the voice, and tensed. Brandt wondered why she'd gone on the defensive…and then he figured it out.

_She thinks I'm_ Clint. She'd actually stopped moving and was staring at him. She studied him. "You look just like him," she said a half second later, as if it'd never happened, the cool exterior never faltering.

"He said you live up to everything the intelligence community says about you." Brandt replied.

She raised an eyebrow. "And what do they say?"

The red-haired assassin had come across his desk once or twice in the course of his time at IMF as an analyst. A ghost that no one could catch. Until one day she just…disappeared…off the face of the earth. And then Clint had brought home a photo of his partner…"Beautiful but deadly," Brandt quoted from the files.

He saw the corners of her mouth twitch.

"You two have met?" Fury queried.

Agents Brandt and Romanoff exchanged looks. "Not personally," Natasha said, at the same time Brandt said, "Feels like it."  
They offered nothing more. "Our guest is arriving," Natasha noted as another of the sleek jets touched down on the deck. She smirked. "I wonder if Coulson asked him to sign his trading cards."

"Probably twice," Fury said. "I'll be on the bridge. Bring him and Banner up to speed."

"Yes sir," Natasha said. Under her breath to Brandt, she muttered, "You're in for a very rude awakening."

"Banner….." Brandt repeated, missing Natasha's barb completely. _Why does that name sound familiar?_

The man who stepped off the ramp looked familiar too, though Brandt couldn't place him. He wore a brown bomber jacket, and was very young, maybe in his twenties. Blonde hair, blue eyes. He was accompanied by a man Fury had described as his "one good eye," Agent Phil Coulson. The young man caught sight of Natasha and Brandt, and the two made their way over to them. "Agent Romanoff," Agent Coulson said. "Captain Rogers." It may have just been Brandt, but there seemed to be something almost….reverent….in Coulson's tone.

Rogers shook her hand. "Ma'am," he said. Then he got a look at who was with her. He frowned, looking at Brandt. "And so I'm confused," he said. "I thought we were looking for him?"

"This is his brother," Natasha explained. "Agent William Brandt of the Impossible Missions Force."

Brandt continued to wrack his brain. _Where the hell have I seen this guy before?_

Rogers frowned. "Is that like the OSS?" he asked.

The OSS was the old, antiquated precursor to the modern day CIA. Brandt looked at him curiously. Natasha caught him. "Agent Brandt," she said, "this is Captain Steve Rogers." She waited half a beat.

It hit him like a brick.

* * *

_Will flew through the backyard, arms outstretched. "Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive!"_

_"He's still not as awesome as Captain America!"_

_"Superman's from outer space!" Will informed his brother, as if that solved the argument._

_Clint looked at him. "He's a foreign threat," he told his little brother. He hoisted the garbage can lid. "Let's see how your alien superpowers stand up to my shield!"_

_"Your shield is made of stuff from a space rock!"_

_"No it isn't!"_

_"Is too! I read it in #1!"_

* * *

"Captain America," Brandt breathed. "Wow." His brother's hero was standing in front of him. There was just one problem….Steve Rogers was a war hero, lost in the Arctic. He was supposed to be frozen, not standing in front of him, flesh and blood.

He remembered Clint's words: _Sometimes in my line of work you have to suspend reality_. And Fury- _In our line of work, not everything is as it appears on the surface._ Natasha was right...this _was_ a rude awakening. _Okay...I'll suspend reality._

Steve offered a hand. "Agent Brandt," he said. Brandt reached for his hand and pumped it once.

"My brother loved you when we were kids," Brandt blurted out. _My first words to a soldier who fought in the Great War and I'm acting like a fanboy. I'm as bad as Benji sometimes._

Steve paused, unsure of how to respond.

"Did Coulson ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards?" Natasha asked then, sensing the awkwardness between the two men.

Steve blinked. "Trading cards?"

"They're vintage," Natasha replied. "He's very proud."

Brandt kept his mouth shut. His father had the same set….

Just then, Steve's eye caught someone coming across the flight deck. Brandt knew him too and remembered now why the name "Banner" sounded so familiar. He'd read the report from General Ross. Ross had everybody looking for him, including IMF. Nobody had seen hide nor hair of the doctor for years. And now here he was. Albeit….this man was _not_ what Brandt'd been expecting. He'd expected someone… _bigger_. He had at _least_ four inches on him. "Dr. Banner," Natasha greeted him. "Captain Steve Rogers."

"Right…they said you'd be coming." Banner regarded the newcomers warily. His eyes lingered longer on Brandt.

Bruce shook Steve's hand. Both men regarded each other. "Word is you can help locate the Cube," Steve said.

"That the… _only_ word on me?" Banner asked, a note of humor in his voice.

Steve looked him in the eye. "Only word I care about," he said.

Banner turned to Brandt. "Well let's see, you're not in black or blue faux leather, so you clearly don't work for SHIELD," he said.  
"Clearly," Brandt replied. "And you look...surprisingly normal." He bit his tongue. _Oh God...don't make fun of him. Let's hope he takes it as a joke, not an insult._

Bruce Banner studied him. Brandt felt uneasy, like a specimen under a microscope, and horribly vulnerable. Jane would be teasing him for being a wuss. "Bruce, this is William Brandt." Natasha purposely left the "agent" off his name, and Brandt knew why-Banner's instinctive distrust of everything government. "He is Agent Barton's brother."

Bruce squinted. "You guys look uncannily alike," he said finally.

"Yeah…well that's the funny thing about being a twin," Brandt shot back, and shut up instantly. He watched Banner closely.

Banner smirked. "You're funny," he told Brandt. "Good thing we both have a sense of humor." He wasn't referring to himself and Brandt. He cocked his head and looked at Brandt. "You have different last names."

"Clint changed his," Will told him. _Always the overprotective big brother_. "See, I hunt down international terrorists for a living. Clint chases Norse gods and guys that can shoot flames from their hands," he explained.

Natasha raised an eyebrow at the 'shooting flames' remark. Brandt shrugged. "Christmas, '91. Long story. Anyway….he switched it to Barton to protect us," Will finished telling them. "His crazies are a little more crazy than my crazies."

An announcement came over the ship's comm, and Natasha felt the familiar rumbling under her feet. "You might want to step inside, gentlemen," she told the men. "Gonna get a little hard to breathe."

Steve felt the rumbling, and heard very loud mechanical gears. "Is this a submarine?" he asked. Natasha only smiled as the three men took cautious steps toward the edge of the flight deck and looked over the side. "Yeah right," Banner said. "They want me in a submerged pressurized metal tube?"

But something was rising out of the water…. _is that an engine?_ Brandt wondered. As the giant engine roared to life and the carrier started to rise from the water. Steve's jaw dropped. They weren't going down…they were going _up._ Bruce grinned, in awe of the technology and in exasperation at the situation. He couldn't help himself as he analyzed the predicament he was in. "No," he said after a moment. "This is much worse."

_IMF has_ got _to get one of these_. He could only imagine Benji's reaction to all this. Brandt whispered, "Holy shit."

"Yeah," Bruce replied. "That's kinda what I was thinking."


	5. Old Teams & New Teams

_Wellington, New Zealand_

"What do you mean, he checked out?" Jane Carter was livid. Benji had woken up five minutes earlier to check on Brandt to discover Brandt's bed empty, their teammate's gear gone-and no sign of Brandt.

The nurse blinked rapidly and took a step backwards. "H-He left about an hour ago."

"Alone?" Ethan asked.

"I-I didn't-"

"Did he walk out of here by himself or did he have help?" Jane demanded. _He was nowhere_ near _healed._

"H-He was with someone," the nurse stammered. "A tall black man in black clothing."

Benji raised a hand. "Did he look friendly?"

The nurse looked at him, confused. "What?"

Ethan shook his head. "What else can you tell me about the man he was with?" he asked her, fighting to keep a civil tone. _If he walked out of here by himself without saying anything, I'll drag his ass back here myself._

"He had an eyepatch," the nurse remembered. "And his belt buckle….it was a weird design."

Benji frowned. "Was it an eagle, or some kind of bird?"

She looked over at him and nodded. "I think it was an eagle."

Benji considered that. "Huh." He looked at Ethan and Jane. "Ah….can I catch the two of you for a moment?"

His teammates glared at him. "Not now," Jane said.

"Trust me, she's given you all she can," Benji told them. "I know where Brandt's gone."

"And that would be?" Ethan asked him.

Benji nodded at the nurse. "That's um…that's classified," he muttered. "Official business, you understand. Jane, Ethan, if you would….yeah, just come over here for a sec." He led them back into Brandt's room and shut the door.

"Where did he go, Benji?" Jane asked him.

"Well, ah, you see that part I don't know-"

"Benji…" Jane said warningly.

He threw his hands in the air. "I don't know where he's gone, okay? But I think I know who he was with when he went wherever it is he went."

"And that would be?" Ethan asked, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the door. Jane perched at the edge of the hospital bed. _He managed to make the bed before he left but he couldn't bother to say goodbye_?

"Well," Benji began, pacing a neat line on the floor, "the description of the man he left with sounds an awful lot like Nick Fury, the director of the Strategic Homeland Intervention and Enforcement Logistics Division."

"The what?" Jane asked, but Ethan suddenly leaned forward.

"SHIELD?" he clarified, looking at Benji. "What the _hell_ would they want with Brandt?"

Jane held up a hand. "Someone want to fill me in?"

Ethan and Benji exchanged looks. "How do you know about SHIELD?" Ethan asked Benji.

"Ah…I may have accidentally stumbled on a reference to Brandt's twin brother in his file when I was digging around in his background…" Benji mumbled.

"Digging around?" Ethan asked, at the same time Jane said, "Twin brother?"

Benji's ears turned pink. "Benji, what were you doing in his file?" Ethan asked, at the same time Jane asked, "He has a twin brother?"

Benji looked from one to the other. "Which question should I answer first?"

"Mine," Ethan said, with a glance at Jane.

"I-I was curious," Benji told him. "It's nothing personal, I did it to you too," he said to Jane. "And Hanaway, and-and even you, Ethan, once, before Moscow."

Ethan frowned. "I just wanted to get to know the people I was gonna be working with, you know?" Benji said. "After that whole thing with Lindsay Ferris…." He looked at Ethan. "I just wanted to make sure I could trust everybody."

He watched Ethan's face closely. Ethan nodded. "Okay then."

"He has a twin brother?" Jane repeated.

"Ah, yeah….Clinton Francis Barton, changed his last name from Clinton Francis Brandt. Used to be a sniper in the Marines, and before that he had a bunch of odd jobs…including the circus…can't really imagine an assassin sharpshooter working for the circus, but some of those guys are pretty scary-"

"Benji," Ethan interrupted and Benji nodded.

"Sorry. Yeah, anyway, not much else in the file, other than a giant mess of red tape I couldn't get into."

"And SHIELD?" Jane asked. "What's that?"

"Well, it's super top secret. Like, the IMF is really top secret, but I don't even think the President knows about SHIELD, and he knows about us so if that tells you anything…" Benji shrugged. "Technically I'm surprised IMF had anything on him but I suppose twin brothers working in top secret organizations is something people want to know about…."

"What do they do, exactly?" Jane asked.

Ethan thought about it a moment. "Nobody knows for sure but rumor has it they're into some pretty crazy stuff," he explained. "Remember that big blowup at the Stark Expo a couple of years ago?"

"Tony Stark?" Benji asked, and Ethan nodded. The tech grinned. "I _love_ that guy!"

Jane and Ethan both raised an eyebrow and looked at him. "What?" Benji defended himself. "Guy's a bloody technological genius. I'd kill for half his toys."

Ethan smiled despite himself. "If Brandt left with the director of SHIELD, there's probably something pretty big going down."

"We should find him," Jane said.

"Try to find a top secret organization that doesn't technically exist?" Benji asked. "Yeah, I'll get right on that. If they don't want to be found, they won't be." He spread his hands. "Brandt's a ghost," he said. "We won't find him unless he wants us to."

* * *

At the moment, Brandt was standing on the bridge of the helicarrier, marveling at the technology that made the carrier essentially invisible. "They reflect everything below them onto the bottom of this thing?" he asked Agent Maria Hill for clarification. She seemed annoyed by his presence; he wasn't sure why. She gave him a short nod. "So what do you do when it's blue skies?" he asked.

She didn't bother to look at him. "Cameras reflect what's above us below us," she told him.

"Do you ever smile?" he couldn't resist asking.

"Only when I'm kicking someone's ass," she replied pointedly. Brandt shut up.

"That still won't find them in time," he heard Natasha say, a response to something Coulson said, and looked around. He spotted her, crouched down next to a workstation, and walked over to her, aware that Maria Hill's eyes were on him. He looked down at the screen to see what she was looking at. It was some kind of video archive file, Clint and Natasha standing amid a pile of rubble. She was firing a pistol at something offscreen, and he was unleashing arrows almost as fast as she was getting shots off. He'd seen his brother shoot before, but he hadn't realized just how fast Clint was. _Wow_. _That's pretty awesome, big brother._

"He's deadly with that thing," Natasha said. "When I first met him…I wasn't sure how much damage he could do with a bow and arrow." She smiled. "Now I know."

"How are you guys looking for them?" Brandt asked.

Natasha pointed across the landing at another set of screens. "Facial recognition. We have access to any camera in the world."

"Big Brother is watching," Brandt said with a grin.

She nodded. "Big Sister, too," she said quietly, so only Brandt could hear.

"How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Brandt's ears picked up another conversation, this one between Fury and Bruce Banner.

"How many are there?" Fury countered.

Banner launched into something very scientific that went _way_ over Brandt's head. He understood the part about needing all of them though. "Do you have somewhere for me to work?" Banner asked Fury. He caught the blank stare on Brandt's face and winked.

"Agent Romanoff, will you show Dr. Banner his lab, please?" Fury asked.

Brandt looked at Natasha. She nodded as she stood up. She walked briskly over to Bruce, "You're gonna love it, Doc," she said. "We got all the toys."

No sooner had they left the bridge then Brandt heard a beeping noise. "We've got a match!" the tech running the recognition software announced. "67….no make that a 85% match."

"Where?" Fury asked, and Brandt got to his feet and followed him over.

"Stuttgart, Germany," the SHIELD tech responded. "He's not exactly trying to hide." He pointed, and Brandt gaped. The computer had locked onto a man who looked _exactly_ like the picture in the book Clint had been studying in their room a year ago.

"What the hell…." he muttered. He looked at Fury. "And Clint?"

"No sign of him," the tech answered for Fury.

"But that doesn't mean he isn't there," Fury noted. He looked up. "Captain."

Steve Rogers looked down at him, from where he'd sort of been standing in awe of everything. He'd been like Brandt, his jaw hadn't picked up off the floor since he'd set foot on the carrier. "You're up," Fury announced, and Steve nodded somberly. Agent Coulson met him and gestured down the hall. The two disappeared, and Brandt heard Hill give the order for someone to prep a jet.

"How do you fight a god?" Brandt asked Fury, the analyst in him dying to know.

"You send in someone else who's damn near immortal," Fury told him.

"Director Fury," Brandt began, unsure of how to phrase his next question, "what's the….order, on my brother?"

"Bring him in alive….if possible."

"'If possible'?" Brandt repeated incredulously. "Sir-"

But a familiar phrase wound itself through his mind. _If any member of your team is caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge_ … "I'd like to go to Germany," he told Fury.

"Not happening," Fury replied. "And that's the last word on that matter that I'll have with you."

Brandt opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. He took a few steps backwards and sat down on the edge of the catwalk, intently watching the screens for any sign of Clint…and gathering any intelligence he could pick up on Loki, the God of Mischief.

 _Classic narcissistic personality. Condescending. He looks down on the people of Earth as inferior._ "Well then again, he _is_ a god," Brandt muttered to himself. Suspending reality was hard. _But then, if you replace Swedish nuclear professors with aspirations of destroying the world to outer space gods who want to rule the planet…._ Maybe his job and Clint's jobs weren't so different after all.

"Agent Brandt," Agent Coulson said from behind him, and Brandt jerked as he glanced over his shoulder. He liked Coulson, despite his seemingly detached attitude. _Guy's stealthy. Like a freakin' ninja._ "Follow me, please?"

Brandt didn't want to leave. He was still desperately hoping for some sign of his brother. "Agent Brandt," Coulson said again. "If they locate him, they'll let you know." He looked up at Fury and Fury gave an almost imperceptible nod. So Brandt got to his feet and followed Coulson off the bridge and down a hall. "Your brother's one of our best agents," Coulson told him after a moment. "Director Fury will do everything in his power to bring him back alive."

"What if they can't break the mind control?" Brandt asked him.

Coulson replied, "We have ways." He pressed a panel and a door slid back. This was the carrier sickbay. Somewhere, there was a hospital that was _very_ jealous. "Agent Brandt, this is Dr. Miller," he said. Dr. Miller was a beautiful SHIELD agent, blonde, with blue eyes, in a white lab coat and a SHIELD-issue bodysuit. Not quite as exotic as Natasha, but beautiful anyway. "Agent Brandt needs to be outfitted with a comm set," he told Dr. Miller.

She smiled. "Have a seat," she said.

Brandt glanced hesitantly at Coulson. "A comm set?" he asked.

Dr. Miller held her hand out, and Brandt looked at the objects in her palm. The earpiece he recognized. The smaller microchip he didn't. "You know how in the spy movies, whenever someone's trying to be sneaky and undercover, they always have a microphone hidden in their collar or in their sleeves?" she asked him.

Brandt knew. IMF had that. "Not very discreet at times," he noted. He often wondered when Benji would run out of places to put a microphone on Jane's dresses…

She smiled brightly. "Exactly," she said. "Well, the chip is glued on your back tooth," she explained pointing to his mouth. "All the chips are on the same frequency-"

"Wouldn't that mean that everybody on this carrier can hear everybody else?" Brandt wasn't sure he'd want Agent Hill in his head 24/7. _Or Fury, for that matter_.

Miller glanced at Coulson, and Coulson nodded. "These are usually only implanted for specific missions when discretion is called for," she told him. "Just the team members receive them."

"So I'm on a team?" Brandt asked, looking at Coulson.

Coulson nodded. "You're on the Avengers Initiative."

Brandt blinked. "Yeah, okay, great." He frowned. "So what happens if I swallow this thing?"


	6. I Can Hear You

His teeth hurt. Brandt was almost afraid to talk, since he had no idea who would be able to hear him now. He sat in silence back in front of the screens. While he'd been getting outfitted with his comm set, Steve Rogers and Natasha had landed in Germany, and all hell was breaking loose. He watched the screens closely, looking for any sign of his brother. But what he saw was Steve pounding away on Loki…and holding his own…for the moment. _Clint...where are you..._ It was hard to focus on the fight. He kept hoping to see his brother standing in the background. Something, _anything_ to show that he was at least still alive. _  
_

"I can't get a clear shot, this guy's all over the map," he heard Natasha in his head. Clear as a bell, like she was right next to him instead of two thousand miles away.

And he swore he could hear screaming guitar. _Obviously a malfunction_ , he thought. Fury didn't strike him as the type to like 80s hair bands but…the music was getting louder. "Agent Romanoff," a voice announced. "Miss me?"

"Stark," he heard Fury groan under his breath, as in his ear, AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" was getting louder and more annoying. Brandt looked up at Fury. _  
_

"He doesn't go anywhere without making an entrance," Fury grumbled.

"What?" Brandt asked, but a hard metal thud came over the speakers on the monitor, and he looked back.

On the screen, something leapt into frame and sent Loki sprawling across the square. Brandt instantly recognized the red and gold metallic paint job, and the voice that said, "Make a move, Reindeer Games."

_Stark_. _Tony Stark._ _Wow_. Brandt slid off the landing and stood behind the SHIELD agent handling the surveillance. Iron Man had arrived, the triangular arc reactor in chest glowing bright blue. From his shoulders and arms, missiles and small submachine guns appeared, all pointed at Loki. _Guns against a god…doesn't seem fair_ , he thought, but to his surprise….Loki was putting up his hands!

In his ear, he heard Tony Stark say, "Good move."

* * *

He figured between Tony, Natasha and Captain America, Loki wouldn't dare try anything on the way back to the carrier, and that it would be an uneventful return trip, so Brandt made his way to the lab to see how Bruce Banner was faring with finding the Tesseract. There'd been no sign of Clint in Germany, and so Brandt was back to square one. The door slid back and he stepped into the lab cautiously. Banner was bent over a computer screen, punching in graphs and coding.

"Hey Doc," Brandt said. "Did you hear, they found Loki."

"I heard," Bruce grimaced, tapping his head. "Nothing like wondering who's eavesdropping on you."

"Well we'll have to stay away from sex jokes and the Playboy centerfold's dimensions this month," Brandt kidded, and Bruce laughed. "Any luck on locating the Tesseract?"

Bruce shook his head. "Haven't really gotten that far yet," he said. "Been building the algorithm, but haven't fully completed it." He punched some keys into the computer and frowned. "And won't for a little bit here yet."

Brandt nodded. "Oh." He leaned against one of the stark white lab tables and crossed one leg over the other. "So you said you were in Calcutta when Nat found you?"

The doctor looked up from his screen with a smile. "Nat? You're on a first name basis with her, huh?"

He shrugged. "She's the only person in this flying dog and pony show that I feel like I already knew coming in to this."

"Your brother doesn't take the 'classified' part of his work seriously, does he." It was a statement, not a question, and Brandt shook his head.

"There's no such thing as 'classified' between us," Brandt replied. "We tell each other everything."

"Everything?" Bruce asked disbelievingly.

Brandt nodded. "Everything." He ran a hand through his hair. "See, both of us live with secrets. Stuff we can't tell our parents...or anybody else...about. Stuff the world doesn't know about, people the world will never know existed. They don't realize how close they come to dying like, every other week. And it's hard." He looked at the floor, toeing the tile. "Clint and I both knew what we were getting into, but we both made a promise that no matter how bad things got, we could always unload on each other." He looked up at Bruce. "Because no one knows better than us what a secret can do to a person's mind…soul…" Then he snorted. "But at least most of my stories don't involve guys that can shoot fireballs with their eyes or tear up small cities with their bare-"

Bruce was staring at him darkly. Brandt uncrossed his legs and stood up instantly, his mind mentally preparing an exit strategy. "I gotta quit doing that," Bruce said with a smile. "You can relax, Agent Brandt. The… _other guy_ …doesn't want to play at the moment." He waited until Brandt's shoulders had relaxed. "And yes, I was in Calcutta when I was asked to…consult…on this project."

"Why Calcutta?"

"There are over 1.2 billion people in India, William," Bruce said. "I was trying to hide, and I was doing pretty well."

"You can call me Will. Or Brandt. I was just in India," Brandt told him. "Mumbai."

"Nice place," Bruce said.

"I got the hell beat out of me there," Brandt countered. "Not so nice." Bruce chuckled. "But…Calcutta. Not exactly a hot relaxation destination."

Bruce's smile faded as he brought up a line on the screen and punched in some numbers. "Yeah well…that's where I could do the most good." He looked at Brandt. "You know about me, you know about the _other guy_ …" He shrugged his shoulders. "Does me wanting to make up for my past damage sound like such a bad thing, Brandt?"

Atonement. There was something Brandt knew a little bit about. "Not at all," he said seriously. "In fact…I know a little something about that."

Bruce pointed at the screen. "We have time before this thing finds the cube," he said. "And I've shared my story…your turn." He pointed at him with a stylus. "Start talking."

So Brandt told him everything-Croatia, Russia, Dubai, Mumbai, Seattle. "There was a part of me that liked being behind a desk," he admitted, hopping up on one of the tables. "It was…safe."

"And yet, here you are," Bruce said, gesturing around at their surroundings.

"Yeah, and yet," Brandt agreed. "But I realized….I missed the action." He shook his head. "I'm sure my mother would prefer to have at least one son behind a desk, but I guess…"

"Sounds like she's a strong woman," Bruce said. He glanced down at the bridge, out into the sunlight. "I know someone like that. Someone you know wishes you wouldn't put yourself in harm's way, but knows that you have to. Someone….that's proud of you for it," he added as an afterthought.

"She sounds amazing," Brandt said.

Bruce nodded. "You have no idea."

"Brandt, you and Dr. Banner need to come down here," Fury's voice echoed in their ears. _Now here's the last person I want in my head_ , Brandt thought.

Brandt got off the table. "Coming?" he asked Bruce.

Bruce nodded. "I'll be down in a minute. I think I almost got this."

Brandt stood in the hallway. As he started for the bridge, a passage opened behind him, and he turned and looked back. Eight SHIELD agents armed to the teeth were coming down the hall. And sandwiched between them was-

"Loki," Brandt hissed under his breath. The pictures were scary but…the god in person was just plain terrifying. He leaned back against the corridor wall as they marched the god past him. As Loki passed, he turned and caught Brandt's eye. Then he smiled. _Not a friendly smile_ , Brandt noted. He narrowed his eyes. _I want my brother back you sonofabitch_.

_Your precious brother is mine_ , Loki's icy voice hissed in his ear, and Brandt gasped. It _felt_ cold. _He can_ hear _me..._

"Brandt," Steve said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Brandt hadn't even heard the soldier come behind him. "Come on."

Brandt allowed Steve to take his arm and pull him back toward the bridge, but his thoughts were a mess. He barely registered sitting down at the table next to Natasha and across from Steve. _That's the guy that has my brother_. He wanted to strangle him with his bare hands.


	7. Blinded By Science

The guy was built like a WWE wrestler, dressed in metal armor and tall boots. He had blonde hair and blue eyes and exuded an air of superiority. "Who's this guy?" Brandt whispered to Natasha as he sat down next to her. Steve took a chair opposite him.

"That would be Thor," she said. "That's Loki's brother."

Brandt remembered the picture in the book Clint had been reading. This Thor didn't have the cape or the hammer, but yeah, it was definitely him. "Friend or foe?" he asked.

"Friend," Natasha said. Then she frowned. "I think."

"What's happening?" Bruce asked, coming to stand between Natasha and Steve. "They got Loki, I see."

"Too easily," Brandt heard Steve mumble. The four of them turned their attention to the video screens embedded in the table as they listened to Fury's "interrogation" of Loki.

"It's an impressive cage," Loki's voice was saying. "Not built, I think, for me."

"Built for someone a lot stronger than you," Fury retorted.

Loki laughed. "Oh, I've heard," he said. "The great beast that makes play he's still a man…"

Brandt looked over at Bruce. The doctor seemed unfazed by the remark. Brandt returned his eyes to the surveillance video.

"Ooo, it _burns_ you to have come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power. Unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share? And then to be reminded what real power is."

He wasn't an analyst for nothing. Loki's choice of words were interesting, to say the least. And when Brandt glanced up at Bruce Banner, the doctor's body language had shifted. But then, just as quickly, it was gone. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. "He really grows on you, doesn't he?" Bruce deadpanned, and Brandt smirked.

"Thor," Steve's voice interrupted their conversation. "What's Loki's play?"

The Norse god was lost in thought, but when Steve said Loki's name, Thor looked at him. "Loki commands a race called the Chitauri. He means to rule Earth with them," he said finally.

"Hold up," Brandt said. "Now there's aliens?"

"Well, there's Norse gods and 70 year old soldiers," Natasha pointed out.

He considered that. "Okay then…" _Thank God Mom and Dad don't have a_ clue _what Clint truly does for a living._ He could almost imagine the dinner table conversation around Thanksgiving...

"An army…" Steve repeated. "Of aliens." Brandt was happy to note he wasn't the only one having trouble with reality at the moment.

"I don't think we should be focused on Loki," Bruce said. "The guy's mind is a bag full of cats."

"Take care how you speak," Thor said sharply. His voice reminded Brandt of a Shakespearean play he'd gone to on the West End after a mission in London. "He is my brother."

Natasha said, "He's killed 80 people in 2 days."

"He is….adopted…." Thor added.

_No excuse_ , Brandt thought. And yet he understood. _My brother's the enemy right now too._ He'd be making excuses for Clint too. _That's not my brother. Clint wouldn't ever do that. That's Loki talking. That's Loki…_ He looked over at the file in front of Natasha, put a finger on it, and slid it over to himself. He flipped it open and started reading it. Someone was fast-it was the workup on Germany. He scanned his way through it. Clint had taken something from there- _Not Clint, Loki_ … _Iridium_? He'd slept through chemistry. _What the hell is that_?

"It's a stabilizing agent," a voice announced, and Brandt jerked. He looked up to see Agent Coulson and Tony Stark. Stark was wearing a suit, tie and a pair of jeans. "Seriously, pick a weekend," he heard Tony telling Coulson under his breath. "I'll fly you out there."

Coulson ignored him and disappeared off the bridge. Apparently he'd been there to drop Tony off. Tony proceeded to spout off more fascinating facts about iridium, which Brandt tried to follow but sadly, it went over his head. Clint was the science geek. Tony had walked his way up to the bridge. "Ah, raise the mizzenmast, lower the sails…"

Brandt ducked his head so everyone wouldn't see him laughing. Tony looked from the screen on his left to the screen on his right. He put a hand over his eye, and looked at them again. "How does Fury see these things?" he asked Agent Hill, who had come in shortly after Tony.

"He turns," Hill said, in the tone she'd reserved for when Brandt asked about the cloaking system.

"Sounds exhausting," Tony said. Then he pointed. "That man is playing Galaga!"

Brandt looked behind him. A blonde-haired young man looked very, very guilty, but tried to hide it. "He thought we wouldn't notice, but we did."

This time, Brandt laughed aloud, but shut up instantly when he caught the looks he was getting from Steve and Natasha. And Agent Hill.

Steve tried to get everyone back on track. "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" he asked.

"He'd have to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Bruce said, tugging off his glasses.

Tony looked at him. "Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunnelling effect."

_Oy,_ Brandt groaned inwardly. _Science again._ _Benji would understand all this._ He felt a pang of sadness. He was starting to regret not letting his team know where he was. Ethan would kill him, if Jane didn't get to him first.

"Selvig?" Thor asked. Brandt glanced at him.

"He's an astrophysicist," Bruce explained.

"He's a friend," Thor informed him.

The doctor raised an eyebrow, then said, "Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet."

Tony looked pleased. He pointed to Bruce. "Finally, someone who speaks English."

_Is that what that was?_ Brandt wondered as Bruce said dryly, "Is that what just happened?"

Tony offered a hand to Bruce. After a moment, Bruce shook it. "Dr. Banner, your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. " Then he grinned. "And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

There was a pause, and the Bruce said, "Thanks."

_Well apparently Tony's not worried about pissing him off_ , Brandt noted.

"One of his many talents," Natasha muttered under her breath, and Brandt hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud.

"I take it you know from experience?" Brandt asked her.

"Unfortunately," she groaned. "Long story."

"Yeah, I bet," Brandt agreed.

"Let's start with that stick of his. It works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon," Steve was telling Fury, and Brandt snapped to attention like a kid caught talking during a test.

"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys," Fury told Steve.

Brandt remembered Loki's voice from earlier and shivered. _I can take a guess…_

Thor looked at Fury, then at Steve. "Monkeys?" He frowned. "I do not understand-"

"I do!"

All eyes turned to Steve Rogers, who looked very pleased with himself. Natasha rolled her eyes and Bruce tried to hide a smile, unsuccessfully. He looked around. "I-I understood that reference," he finished lamely.

"Shall we?" Bruce asked Tony. Tony clapped him on the back and the two science geeks disappeared, leaving everyone else on the bridge.

Brandt held up a hand and looked around the table. "Did anybody else not understand half of what they said?"

Everybody else raised their hands.


	8. Secrets and Lies

"So what are you, FBI, CIA?"

"No, and no."

"Come on, you have to belong to something that only comes with initials. NSA?"

"No."

"WWF?"

Brandt rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm an assassin for a cute cuddly panda."

"I meant the wrestling thing."

"They're the WWE now."

"And Barton's your brother?"

Brandt stopped and looked at him. "Yeah, he is." His tone dared Tony Stark to try to make a snide comment, but Tony only popped a handful of some packaged dried blueberries in his mouth and went back to his computer screen.

"Anyway, it's bugging him too," Tony told Steve, jerking a thumb at Bruce. The three of them were discussing Loki, and Fury.

Bruce's eyes shot up from Loki's spear. Steve turned to him, and Bruce held up a hand. "Hey, I just want to find the cube and-"

"Doctor?" Steve pressed, and Bruce sighed. He pulled off his glasses. "Ah, 'a warm light for all mankind'," he said. "Loki's jab at Fury." He looked at Tony. "Well, I think that was meant for you."

Steve turned to Tony questioningly. "I'm sort of the only name in clean energy right now," he admitted.

"Exactly," Bruce said. "So why not bring him in on the Tesseract project? Why call him in _now_?"

"If we needed to know something, Fury would have-"

"Captain, he's s _spy_. He's _the_ spy. His secrets have secrets," Tony told him, as if he was explaining it to a four year old.

"Something's fishy," Brandt agreed. "Fury didn't put the best marksman in the world on this project to keep little green men from popping out of a hole in space." He looked at Steve, Tony, and Bruce. "There's something bigger going on here. You don't need to be a spy to see that."

"Says the spy," Tony pointed at him with the blueberry packaging, and Brandt shrugged.

"Come on Steve," Banner said. "You can't tell me this doesn't smell a little funky to you?"

Brandt watched Steve closely. The man out of time seemed even more out of place right now in this three on one battle. Then he turned on his heel and left the lab, the door sliding shut with a vacuum hiss. He looked at the two geniuses. "Ah….I think I'll leave the science stuff to you," he said hastily, and followed Steve into the hall. He saw him stop midway to the bridge, and then hesitate. Before Brandt could hide, Steve's eyes met his. "What are you doing here?" he asked Brandt.

"I keep asking myself that," Brandt admitted.

"I meant, what are you doing following me?" Steve asked him, exasperated. "But I wouldn't mind an answer to the other question either."

"And I'm only coming up with one answer: I'm here to help my brother." Brandt told him.

"I didn't see him in Germany," Steve said.

"Nobody did, but we know he was there," Brandt said. The arrows in two bodies were enough proof-both shot in the heart, Clint's preferred organ. He'd seen the surveillance shots in the file. He looked at Steve. "I have to get him back, and I'm not leaving until I do. Where are you headed?"

Steve stepped closer to him. "I think they're right," he said, referring to Tony and Bruce. Then, in a low voice, "I didn't want to say that in front of Stark, though."

Brandt chuckled. "Yeah, I get that," he said. "So then…what's our next move?"

" _Our_ next move?" Steve raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think _we_ have a next move?"

"You're moving like a man on a mission," Brandt pointed out. "So. Seriously. Where are we going?"

* * *

Brandt followed Steve down several decks. They were far enough down that Brandt could barely hear engine noise, and they hadn't passed another person on the last two decks. "You know where you're going?" Brandt asked him. Steve was moving so determinedly that Brandt was having a hard time keeping up with the super soldier.

Steve stopped in front of a door marked, SECURE. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. "Right here," he said.

"Looks like it needs a code," Brandt said.

Steve grabbed the door and pulled. Hard. Brandt heard the vacuum seal hiss and break as he slid the door backwards. "Ah….never mind."

"Not so secure," Steve shrugged. He stepped into the room.

"Storage?" Brandt guessed, looking around.

"Then this is the most secure broom closet I've ever seen," Steve said.

The IMF agent grinned. "What are we looking for?"

Steve looked around. "I don't know."

Brandt stepped up to a crate and inspected it. "Phase 2," he read the black lettering on top of it. "What the hell is that?"

"Good question," Steve said. He leapt onto a crate, then jumped up and grabbed onto a railing on the catwalk above them. Brandt watched in awe. "You're like Spiderman," Brandt said.

"Who?" Steve asked, swinging himself onto the landing.

"Never mind," Brandt said. He popped the lid on the crate in front of him and peered inside. His eyes widened. "Oh shit…" he muttered.

"Dr. Banner was right," he heard Steve say from above him. "This _is_ funky."

"Steve….you understand what this is, right?" Brandt's tone was deadly. _Right on the money, Tony._

"Yeah," Steve said, hopping down next to him, a very _large_ gun in his hands. "It means Fury has been lying to us. And I don't know about you, but I think I'd like an explanation for this."

"You and me both," Brandt said.

* * *

Brandt hit the door lock so hard he almost broke it. The door to the lab slid back just as Tony asked Fury, "What _is_ Phase 2?"

"Phase 2 is SHIELD uses the Tesseract to make weapons," Steve announced as he and Brandt came into the room. He plopped the massive gun on the table in the lab and glared at Fury. He looked over at Tony. "Sorry, computer was moving a little slow for me," he said. Brandt crossed his arms over his chest and rounded on Fury. "So what's your real mission here, Fury? You tryin' to save the planet or destroy it?" He must have broken the door lock. Natasha and Thor came into the room without the hiss.

"I'd like to know why SHIELD is making weapons of mass destruction," Bruce agreed.

"Because of _him_!" Fury pointed at Thor. Thor's jaw dropped. It would've been funny, had Brandt not been in the same room as two master assassins, a god, the Hulk, Iron Man, and a super soldier.

"Last year, we had an…event," Fury told them all. "And we realized that we're hopelessly, _hilariously_ outgunned."

"My people have no quarrel with your world," Thor said.

"But you're not the only people out there, are you?" Fury said.

Brandt's head was spinning. _Did Clint know_? He looked over at Natasha. _Did_ she _know about this?_ And suddenly, what was the mission here? Loki was in a cage. His spear sat inches from Bruce Banner's hand. Clint was missing. He didn't know what to do. He closed his eyes as the arguments around him swelled.

"SHIELD monitors potential threats!" Natasha was telling Bruce.

_So Natasha knew what Fury had planned for the Tesseract._ Brandt didn't know if SHIELD was the good guys or the bad guys anymore.

"Captain America's on the potential threat watch list?" Bruce asked her incredulously. He was livid, and Brandt noticed the doctor's hands starting to clench into fists.

"Bruce," Brandt said. "Come on, man, calm down."

Bruce turned on him. "And what are you? You don't work for SHIELD but Tony's right, you're definitely not just some civilian. When do you plan on telling us what _your_ angle is?"

"I'm here to find my brother!" Brandt told him. "That's it! Who I work for doesn't matter!"

"Your work with the Tesseract drew Loki to you. It signals that Earth is ready for a higher form of war," Thor barked at Fury. "You speak of control, yet you court chaos!"

Brandt looked over at Tony and Steve. "You're a lab experiment, Rogers. Everything _special_ about you came from a bottle," Tony hissed at him.

"Put on the suit," Steve said cockily. "Let's go a few rounds."

Not for the first time that day, Brandt wished he had his gun with him. The tension in the room was terrifying. Suddenly a nuclear missile, stolen launch codes and Dubai seemed so tame compared to this. He gripped the work table so hard his knuckles were white. He didn't know if he should try to help calm Banner down, get the ruler out for Cap and Stark, or just hide in a corner and cry like a baby. Somewhere, he was sure, Loki was laughing his ass off. _Mission accomplished_ , he thought darkly. He wished his brother was here. Clint always knew how to take command and defuse situations.

"Back where? You rented my room!" Bruce was yelling at Fury.

"That cell was built-"

"In case you needed to kill me, but you _can't_." The pronunciation made the entire room go deathly quiet. Bruce looked around at all the eyes on him. "I _tried_. I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth, and the _other guy_ _spit it back out._ " He glared at Natasha. "I moved on. I focused on helping people. I was _good_ , and then _you_ dragged me back into this _freak show_ and put everyone here at risk!"

For a split second, Brandt thought he caught a flash of green in Banner's normally brown eyes. He glanced at Natasha. He caught a breath. Natasha Romanoff, Clint's partner, the Black Widow….looked _scared_. Her hand was on her gun.

"You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff, you wanna know how I stay calm?" Bruce took a step toward her. Brandt let go of the table, ready to step between Bruce and Natasha. Either one of them could kill him with their bare hands, but the alternative was far, _far_ worse.

"Dr. Banner," Steve said calmly from the other side of the room. Bruce whipped around to face him.

" _What_?"

"Put down the scepter," Steve said. Brandt looked at Bruce and saw that the doctor had picked up Loki's glowing staff. Bruce looked down at his hands. His eyes widened.

Brandt held his breath.

_BeepBeepBeep_.

"Got it!" Tony announced quickly. The software locating the gamma signature of the Tesseract was going off. _Saved by the bell_ , Brandt thought. He glanced back at Banner. Bruce set the scepter back on the table, and walked over to the computer. "Sorry kids, guess you don't get to see my party trick after all." He punched in a button and waited. Then he frowned. "Oh my God."

_I've had just about enough damned surprises._ "What now?" Brandt demanded.

A shockwave rippled through the room, sending everyone off kilter. Brandt was ripped from his position, almost landing on top of Thor. The shockwave sent Steve and Tony sideways into the wall. Beneath their feet, the floor groaned...then collapsed. Brandt saw Natasha and Bruce disappear through the floor as he was thrown sideways. Warning sirens and lights went off all around him as the carrier went into DEFCON 1. He heard Steve tell Tony, "Put on the suit," and Tony reply "Yep," as Steve hustled him out the door. Brandt looked down into the hole where the floor had been. Natasha's leg was pinned, and Banner was writhing in pain. "Natasha? Bruce? You guys okay?"

He looked up at Fury. "What the hell was that?"

"We lost the #3 engine!" he heard Agent Hill yell over his earpiece. _Apparently someone's plugged her into the 'team,'_ Brandt thought.

He heard Fury barking orders and saw several people down on the bridge. "Fury!" he yelled, helping the older man stand. "What's going on? Who blew up the engine?"

Fury turned on him. "Your damned brother," he said, and then disappeared from the lab as he started for the bridge.

_Clint?_ Brandt's heart leapt. He looked out past the bridge, but all he could see was the engine on fire. _Clint's here_? He looked around. Thor was gone. Steve and Tony had disappeared. He looked down at Natasha. "Nat, you okay?" he asked her.

She struggled with her pinned leg. "Fine!" she lied. "Go find him!"

Brandt fled the lab. He needed to find two things: Clint…and a gun.

Then, below his feet, he heard a growl. _Oh no_ , he thought, his blood running cold. _The Hulk is loose_.


	9. Gods and Monsters

_The Hulk is loose._

Brandt sprinted for the nearest hatch, throwing himself down the stairs three at a time and landing hard on the landing below. "Natasha?" he yelled. He'd seen the fear in her eyes earlier. She needed help right now. He needed to help the one ally he had, and _then_ go search for his brother.

A monstrous roar answered him, and his blood ran cold. " _Natasha!_ " He didn't have a gun, and he was running after the Hulk with nothing but his bare hands. Who the hell did he think he was, Ethan Hunt? Brandt turned a corner. Natasha was running right at him, and right behind her was-

He swore a four-letter streak and turned around and sprinted down the catwalk as Natasha followed. "Goddamn it Banner!" Brandt yelled over his shoulder, but Hulk just roared louder.

"I-I don't think he's in there," Natasha said as she shoved him forward. The two of them ran up a flight of stairs, and then Natasha jumped, caught a water pipe, and swung over the side. She landed neatly below him. Brandt looked at her. "Screw that, like that's gonna happen," he said, choosing instead to jump over the railing. He landed hard and very ungracefully, and his already broken ribs screamed in pain. Natasha jerked him sideways, and the two of them sat completely still, neither of them breathing, as the Hulk went searching for them.

And then he found them. Neon green eyes narrowed at them, and he roared. Natasha was correct; Brandt couldn't see Banner in there, just the monster. Natasha swore in Russian and fired three shots into the cooling unit above them. Cold air rained on the Hulk, and he roared again. Natasha grabbed Brandt and they scrambled out of the way. The Hulk ripped through the bulkheads, coming after them.

Something silver slammed into the Hulk, and drove him through the wall. From where he was, Brandt _swore_ he heard laughing.

Brandt and Natasha were both crouched on the grated floor. "What the hell was that?" Brandt asked, the question of the day.

"T-Thor," Natasha breathed. Brandt looked down at her. Natasha had pulled herself into a ball, arms around her knees.

"Natasha?" Brandt asked, turning to face her. "Nat?"

She said nothing. She stared into space.

_Humans she could deal with, but not great green monsters and gods…_ He put a hand on her shoulder.

She jerked away.

Brandt inched his hand slowly forward until it was on her shoulder again.

This time, she let it stay.

* * *

It seemed like hours, but was merely moments later when he heard Agent Hill in his earpiece.

'Barton's headed for the Detention Level! Does anybody copy?'

Brandt heard the voice in his ear, and he looked down at Natasha. The assassin had her arms wrapped around her knees, breathing slowly, her body shaking. 'This is Brandt-' he started to say, but a voice stopped him and cut in.

'This is Agent Romanoff,' Natasha said. 'I copy.'

She got to her feet, letting Brandt's hand slide off her shoulder. 'You don't have to do this,' Brandt told her. 'He's my responsibility.'

'He's my partner,' Natasha countered.

'We don't have time to argue this,' Brandt said. 'I don't want-'

'I'm not going to kill him unless he makes me,' Natasha told him. She looked in his eyes, identical to Clint's. 'I want him back too,' she said. Five words spoken; volumes said.

Brandt opened his mouth to argue, but then sighed. 'It's still him in there Natasha,' he reminded her. As if she needed reminding.

'I know. And I'll get Loki out of there.'

'Okay,' Brandt said. 'Go. I'm going to see if Tony and Steve need help.'

'Be careful, Will,' Natasha said.

'You too,' he replied.

As he disappeared into the depths of the ship, he passed a determined-looking Phil Coulson. 'Agent Coulson-' he started.

Phil looked at him grimly. 'Fighters are engaging the Hulk on the hangar deck. Steve and Tony are fixing Engine 3, and there's several people down on the bridge.'

'Which way to the bridge?' Brandt asked. He was no match in a hand to hand fight for his brother, and he knew it. Clint used to joke that their mother was a better sparring partner than Will was. Natasha could handle him-or Loki. He needed to put himself where he could do the most good. And right now, that sounded like it was on the bridge.

Coulson pointed. 'Where are you going?' Brandt asked him.

'When you're hopelessly outgunned,' he said, echoing Fury's words from earlier, 'you go get a bigger gun.' He looked at Brandt. 'It was a pleasure working with you.' Then the older man was gone.

Ignoring the worried feeling in his chest, Brandt arrived on the bridge. Agent Hill was multitasking per usual, giving orders on the bridge to keep the carrier in the air even as she tended to a gash on a crewman's head. Hill turned to someone on his right. 'Snap to!' she yelled. 'If you can't do your job then get off this bridge!'

Brandt looked down. The woman behind the console was frozen in her seat. Brandt locked eyes with Hill, then swung through the railing. 'I got this,' he said reassuringly. 'Get outta here.' She practically ran from the room, and Brandt studied the schematic on the screen in front of him. 'Engine 3 is still inoperable,' he reported to Agent Hill. 'Hey, Tony, Steve, how're we coming out there?' he asked into his comm.

'Almost got it,' Tony ground out in his ear. 'Gonna need three-no, four-sonofabitch- well more like four and a-" there was a bang, "-half more minutes...'

'4:29, 4:28...' Brandt immediately began counting until an irate Ethan Hunt's voice cut in. _The countdown is NOT helping...Damn do I miss them right now..._

Hill looked at him. 'How are they coming?'

Brandt checked his watch. "Four minutes til it's online,' he reported.

'We may not have four minutes,' Hill said.

In his ear, Brandt heard several things happen at once. He heard Thor scream, a loud, and desperate sounding, "No!" He heard Natasha groan in pain. He heard Tony yell at Steve and Steve yell something inaudible back.

_Jesus_ , he thought. _Hell's breaking loose._ 'Hill, do you need me here?'

'No!' she yelled back. She'd heard the same commotion he had. 'Go!'

He jumped up from the station.

'Brandt!' Hill yelled. He turned and caught the small black shape she'd thrown at him. He turned the Sig Sauer over in his hands and looked up at her. "Thanks," he said. She only nodded, but he swore he almost saw her smile. He shoved it in his waistband and sprinted from the bridge.

_Except where do I go first?_ he wondered. _Steve and Tony? Natasha and Clint? Thor?_

He blinked and ran toward the detention block. As he skidded through the hatch and he froze.

_Clint..._

Down the hall he could see Natasha and his brother going at it. He hadn't seen his brother in nearly a year, and this was not how he'd hoped their reunion would go. Clint handled the bow as a staff almost as well as he shot with it. Natasha had ahold of the bowstring but Clint clocked her under the chin with it and she staggered back. She recovered quickly, pulling a knife from her boot. She rolled past Clint and came up. Clint whipped around to face her and locked eyes with Brandt. His eyes were an icy blue instead of their normal brown. The color made Brandt shiver. _Your precious brother is mine_... 'Clint?' Brandt tried.

If Clint was in there somewhere and recognized him he didn't show it. "It's okay, brother," he told him in a stone cold voice. "When I'm done with her, then we'll play too." The voice was not the voice that whispered back and forth between the bunks back home, or the voice that joked with their parents. It was _not_ Clint.

"Leave her alone, Loki," Brandt said.

Clint only smiled. Brandt froze. He'd seen that smile. Clint pulled a knife on Natasha and went after her again. Tasha caught his arm and bent it backwards, but he flipped the knife from the trapped hand to the other and swung it at her eye. Brandt pulled his gun but couldn't get a clear shot. 'Please don't make me shoot him,' he whispered.

But he took aim anyway...

Clint knocked Natasha down, did a somersault over her, using the railing, and landed in front of his brother. He knocked Brandt's gun aside and slammed a boot into his brother's already bruised ribs. "Good to see you again, Will," Clint said as his brother doubled over.

"You're not Clint," Brandt gasped. _Goddamn it….that hurts!_

"Oh, it's all me Will," Clint laughed. "Two minutes older, always the best."

"I know you're…in there," he said, looking into his brother's eyes. "Fight him, Clint, come on."

Clint shrugged. "There's nobody home up here," he said, pointing his knife at his temple.

He was so busy taunting his brother he didn't see Natasha coming up behind him. Natasha grabbed ahold of his hair and slammed Clint's forehead against the yellow metal handrail- _hard_. Brandt watched his brother sink to his knees, dazed.

'...Tasha?' Clint whispered. In his own voice.

Natasha threw a cross that sent him in a heap to the floor. She let her hand fall to her side as she looked up to see Brandt watching, the gun in his hands.

'He'll be okay,' she said quickly. 'I didn't hit him that hard.'

Brandt stood rooted to the spot. 'Brandt...' she said. 'Put the gun down.' When he still didn't move, Natasha snarled, 'Agent Brandt! Drop your weapon!'

He blinked. 'Natasha,' he said. 'I...Jesus...' He safetied the gun and put it in his waistband. He looked at Clint. 'Is he-'

'Alive, yes,' Natasha said. 'Back to normal...I don't know.'

"Normal," Brandt repeated. "What the hell is that?"


	10. Reunion

Brandt didn't move from his place on the deck as two SHIELD agents picked up his brother's lifeless form and started to carry him off. "Put him in lockdown in sickbay," he heard Natasha barking orders. "And make sure there's nothing sharp, pointy or anything that can be used as a weapon anywhere near him."

"Agent Romanoff, you should-" One of the agents tried to tell her she should have the nasty cut on her forehead checked out, but Natasha glared at him with such a fierce look that he backed off. Brandt heard footsteps disappear into the depths of the ship. Only then did he try to get to his feet. Clint's boot had caught him in his already broken ribs, and the fall over the railing onto the deck hadn't helped. He gripped the rail as he tried to stand. Natasha grabbed him under the armpit and helped hoist him upright. "Feeling dizzy? Sharp pain?"

He shook his head. "Only thing that hurts is my ego," he said, lying through his teeth. "I need to...see my brother."

"You should get checked out first," Natasha told him.

"I'm fine," Brandt lied, and hissed in pain as he took a few steps.

She raised an eyebrow. "Apparently being a stubborn sonofabitch runs in your family," she said.

He looked at her. "You're not okay," he said. "You really should have that looked at. I know how hard he hits."

She muttered something in Russian.

Brandt answered, "I'm not the only stubborn one here," with a flawless accent.

She looked at him in surprise. "I can also say it in Mandarin, Portuguese and Arabic if you'd prefer," he added, wincing. "I'll go if you go?"

She nodded. "Okay."

Halfway up the stairs they ran into a medical team. "Where're you headed?" Brandt asked. "Can we help?"

One agent turned to his partner, then to Natasha. "It's Agent Coulson," he said finally.

"What about him?" Natasha asked sharply.

"Loki got him," the agent said. "He's….he's gone." Then he ran past them, headed for the detention block.

Natasha looked at Brandt, her eyes wide in disbelief. "No," she whispered. One knee gave way, and Brandt grabbed her arm.

"Nat-"

She straightened up so fast Brandt though he'd imagined it. "I'm fine," she said quickly. "We need to go check on Clint."

"Natasha," Brandt started, but Natasha shook her head.

"I lost one friend today," she said to him. "I don't have many of those left. I'm not going to lose Clint, too."

* * *

It was unnerving for Brandt to see Clint lying so still. His brother had been the athlete-football, soccer, had been the one to drive faster than he should. Brandt knew for many years his father had worried that one day he was going to respond to a call and see Clint involved. "You really clocked him, huh," he asked Natasha. The redhaired assassin sighed. "I didn't want to," she said.

"He'd have killed you otherwise," Brandt pointed out.

"Loki would have," she corrected him. "Not Clint."

"When he wakes up I'm telling him you saved his life," Brandt informed her. "And he's going to owe you a drink or four." He stared through the glass. "He was only ever in the hospital once when we were kids," he told her. "Amazingly enough." He chuckled at the memory. "We were at our school's playground. Clint was on top of the monkey bars." He shook his head. "I swear if he wasn't pretending to be Captain America he was Robin Hood."

"Can't picture that one at all," Natasha said dryly and Brandt laughed.

"Anyway, so he's up there having just stormed Prince John's castle when I grab his foot. And I guess he didn't have a good grip on the bars or something "cause he kinda pitched forward." Brandt paused. "He fell head first off the top. It was only like seven feet but when you're a kid, that's a long way down."

He looked at his brother. "Stuck his hands out to catch himself, kinda did a somersault forward. Broke his fall but it gave him a hairline fracture and laid him up." He looked at Natasha now. "But he didn't blame me. He said, "Thanks for pulling me down Little John. Prince John almost saw me."

She frowned. "I feel like you're trying to tell me something. But I don't understand the reference."

He nodded. "I'm saying he won't blame you for this. You saved his life. When he's up...the first person he'll be after is Loki."  
They both stood in silence for a moment. Then Brandt said, "I'm going to see if Fury needs any help with...with Coulson."

"He wakes up you're second to know," Natasha promised him.

* * *

His arms yanked at the restraints around his wrists as he fought to get loose. His mind was a jumbled mess. So many images and thoughts swam around that he didn't know which were his and which had been planted...The veins in his arms pulsed as he strained to be free. He looked at Natasha with murder in his eyes. "You'll be all right," she said, doing her best to ignore the evil in his eyes.

"I'm gonna be okay? Is that what you know?" he growled at her, his eyes still glowing blue. He closed his eyes again. Memories swam forward. _He and Natasha, in Moscow. In Mexico City. The glowing blue cube. Loki..._ He shook his head, trying to dislodge the god from his thoughts. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if somehow that would sort things out. "I can't get a window. Can't get him out…."

_Get OUT of my HEAD!_ He swore he heard Loki laughing. More images and memories swam to the forefront. _Roundhousing his little brother. Germany. The folks at Christmas last year. Knocking Fury away from Loki"s staff. Taking a bullet for Tasha in Rio._ _He and Will, at Will's graduation from training. The two of them after Clint completed BASIC. Yeah that's it,_ he thought. _Focus on those. The good ones. Target shooting with Dad and Will. Hiking the Appalachian trail through the Carolinas…London. Tasha, in Budapest, in that red dress…_

Natasha watched his eyes return to their normal brown. She waited hesitantly. He blinked, two or three times, almost like he was trying to fix a contact. Except he didn't need them. "It's going to take you a while to come down from this," Natasha said.

"You don't understand," he said, taking a deep breath. Oh Christ. It was good to be himself again. At least, he thought he was himself. "Have you ever had someone inside your head….pull you out, and stuff something else in?" Clint looked at her. He could see it in her eyes, she knew _exactly_ what he was talking about. "You know what it's like to be unmade."

"You know I do," she replied earnestly. They rarely brought up her past, but she knew. Better than anyone.

"What am I doing back?" he asked slowly. "H-how did you get him out?"

"Cognitive recalibration," Natasha said, handing him a glass of water and sitting down next to him. When he looked at her, confused, she explained, "I hit you really hard over the head." She leaned over him and undid the restraints on his arms.

"…Thanks," he said after a moment.

She nodded. _You'd do the same for me_. It was good to have him back. He downed the glass of water like a shot and closed his eyes. Loki was still lingering in his subconscious. "Natasha…." He looked up at her, his eyes clouding over with guilt. "How many agents did I-"

"Don't," she interrupted. "Don't do that to yourself Clint. That wasn't you. That was Loki." Green eyes met brown eyes as she looked at her partner seriously. "This is…magic, and monsters, and nothing we were ever trained for," she told him.

She knew it didn't make him feel better.

The door to sickbay slid open and Brandt stood there. Relief flooded his face. "Clint," he said breathlessly. He threw his arms around his brother. After a moment, Clint followed suit. Brandt pulled back and looked into a matching pair of brown eyes. "You get contacts?" he asked him.

"Don't need 'em," Clint replied. His brother was watching him intently. "Will. It's me," he said earnestly. "All me. I'm back. He's…" he looked at Natasha. "He's out."

"Sonofabitch," Brandt said, hugging him again. "It's good to have you back again, brother."

"Feels good to be me again," Clint said honestly. "Loki…did he.."

"He got away," Natasha said. "But we're going to get him."

"'We'?" Clint repeated.

"Whoever's left," Natasha said fiercely.

"Who _is_ left?" Clint asked.

Brandt looked at Natasha. "Tony and Steve are fine. Engines are both operable. Think the Iron Man suit got a little banged up though. Fury's okay. Hill's fine, got a couple of nicks and scrapes from when Loki's guys tried to shoot their way into the bridge…" He didn't look at Clint as he said it.

"What about Bruce?" Natasha asked. "And Thor?"

Brandt bit his lip. "Bruce is…gone. The Hulk tore apart an F-35 and got thrown away from it when it exploded. Nobody's sure where he landed. And Thor…Thor was in the detention block when Coulson…" He trailed off. Clint didn't need to know…

"Will," Clint said quietly. "It's okay." He was lying, but they didn't need to know that. He could see it in his brother's eyes. In Natasha's. _No…Damn it….Phil…_

"Loki ejected him in the pod," Brandt said. "I-we don't know where he is."

Clint's fingers curled into fists. "Well," he said, looking at Natasha. "I suppose if I put an arrow in Loki's eye socket, I might sleep better." _For Phil. For Tasha….and for me._

Natasha and Brandt both smiled. "Now you sound like you," Natasha said.

"Yeah," Clint agreed. "But you don't." He looked meaningfully at his partner.

Natasha didn't say anything. Clint got up off the bed, gingerly. "Jesus, Tasha," he said as the room spun as he stood up. "There's a dent in that railing, isn't there."

"There might be," she replied. He disappeared into the small bathroom. Brandt looked at Natasha.

"He's lying," Brandt told her.

She nodded. "I know. But I also know he'll talk about it when he's ready."

The door to medical slid back, and Steve Rogers was standing there. The look in his eye was determination. "We're going after Loki, he said. He looked at them. "Can you fly one of those... things?" Steve asked Natasha.

"I can."

Everyone turned as Clint came out of the bathroom. He looked from Steve to Natasha to Brandt.

Steve glanced sideways at Natasha, as if asking for her approval that Clint was back to normal and wouldn't try to kill them all before Loki and the Chitauri could.

Natasha nodded in the affirmative.

That was good enough for Steve. "Then suit up," he told Clint. Clint nodded, determination on his face. Steve turned and disappeared to go round up their ride.

Brandt raised an eyebrow. "You have a suit?" He asked Clint.

"Mom made it for me," Clint said without missing a beat. "Shut up, Will."

"Suit up," Brandt retorted. "You're holding us up."

"Go make yourself useful," Clint shot back.

"Boys..." Natasha said.

"I'll be on the hangar deck," Brandt said. "I need a bigger gun." _And I need to make a phone call._ He left Natasha and Clint. Outside, he leaned against the bulkhead and put a hand to his forehead. His brother was back. He wasn't one hundred percent. He knew that Clint was repressing the feelings of guilt and the pain from his injuries. Putting the job first. _  
_

But Brandt knew that family dinners were going to be a little more awkward now, for a while, anyway.

* * *

**Washington, DC**

The worst part of the job was the paperwork. Ethan Hunt hated post-mission reports. It would be so much better if they had cameras on all their missions. And this one was especially difficult to write. _Agent Brandt threw the bomb into the bay. He and Agent Dunn were injured in the ensuing explosion and were both taken to the hospital-_

"At which point Agent Brandt walked out without telling any of his team where he went," Benji interjected over Ethan's shoulder.

"Yeah, well I can't exactly write that," Ethan muttered.

"Look, I'm sure he had a good reason," Benji assured his team leader. "Come on. You've kept secrets from your team before," he added. "Moscow? Croatia?"

"Benji-" Ethan said, but then stopped. He shook his head. "You're right," he said finally. "I'm sure he had a good reason."

"Yeah well I'd love to know what that reason was," Jane bit off. "What the hell is that noise?"

Benji's hands flew to his pants pocket. He pulled out his phone, and his eyes went wide. "It's Brandt!" he said. He flipped it open. "Brandt?" he demanded. "Where the hell are you, man?"

" _Benji, it's good to hear your voice,"_ Brandt said over the phone. _"Look, how fast can you guys get to Manhattan?"_

"Ah, just a sec," Benji said. He put a hand over the phone. "He's in Manhattan. How fast can we get there?"

"Everything all right?" Ethan asked.

" _I heard him,"_ Brandt told Benji. " _Look, you guys won't believe it 'til you see it. Just get there."_ His tone was grim. " _We're gonna need all the help we can get_."

"Is your brother okay?" Jane asked sourly.

" _Ah….fine. I think. I swear I'll tell you guys everything, but right now, we need help."_

Benji answered for the group, "We're on our way." Then he paused. "Who's 'we'?" he asked.


	11. This Part Seems Familiar

It should have been such an epic moment, Brandt thought, as he helped the SHIELD ensign prep the Quinjet, but all he could do was grin as he caught sight of his brother, Natasha, and Captain America striding through the hangar. The leather vest, black quiver and black combat pants really _did_ make his brother look like a superhero. Brandt hopped off the ramp as Steve, Tasha and Clint stopped at the edge. "Jet's fueled and ready," he told them. He really wanted to take a picture of the scene and send it to his parents. Dad would be in awe of Captain America. Mom would get a kick out of it...and then be mad at them for running off into a war zone.

"Where's your big gun?" Clint asked.

Brandt turned so Clint could see the M1 strapped to his back. "Ah."

"If you're done comparing caliber," Steve said, "we should move. Stark can't hold Loki off alone, not for long."

"Did Captain Cleaver just make a sex joke?" Clint asked Natasha.

"I think he did," Natasha replied.

Steve frowned. "Who?"

"Beaver wasn't around til the '50s," Brandt told his brother.

Clint considered that. "Nope, joke still stands."

"A horrible one," Natasha said. She looked at Clint seriously. "It's really nice to have you back."

"Says you," Brandt countered. "You don't have to share bunkbeds with him." Clint flipped him off as the two SHIELD agents went up the ramp and into the jet, following Captain America. Sarcasm and joking around were their way of concealing nerves. Better to come off cocky than come off scared out of your mind.

The guy helping Brandt prep the jet looked at them. "You don't have permission-"

"Son," Captain America said, cutting him off. "Just don't."

Brandt chuckled as the flustered tech looked at Steve and Brandt. Brandt shrugged. "So...we're gonna borrow this, if you don't mind," he told him. The tech glared at them, decided he didn't want to screw with Captain America, Hawkeye and the Black Widow, and walked off the jet. Brandt hit the button to close the hatch and Clint maneuvered the jet onto the flight deck for takeoff. The joking mood was gone. All four of the jet's occupants were focused on Loki and the task ahead.

* * *

_"Substitute in English," Andy Romeaux told Will in the hall outside the music room._

_Will grinned. "Guy or girl?"_

" _Woman," Andy replied. "And not the brightest color crayon in the box."_

_"I'll tell Clint," Will said. "See ya in class..."_

_"Oldest trick in the book," Clint was telling Hannah Arendt. "Been doin it since sixth grade."_

_"Never gets old," Will said, joining his brother and his girlfriend. "Hey Hannah."_

_"Hi Will."_

_"Better start callin' me Clint," Will said with a wink. "ll sit next to you," he told Clint. He grinned. "I love subs."_

_"You guys were born to cause trouble," Hannah said, rolling her eyes._

_"Hell yeah we were," Clint enthused. He clapped his brother on the back. "Come on, little brother, let's go have some fun."_

* * *

**Manhattan**

"What, did you stop for takeout?"

"Nice to see you too, Tony," Natasha groaned as the jet swung into view over Midtown Manhattan. None of them could believe what they were seeing. There was a massive…Brandt wanted to call it a 'hole' though he supposed that wasn't the correct scientific term (and Banner wasn't here to explain it to him), in the sky. And pouring from it were the Chitauri. Brandt couldn't begin to describe them or the flying contraptions they were on other than…well, _otherworldly._

"Swing down Park," Stark said over the comm. "I'm gonna lay 'em out for ya." Clint complied, angling the Quinjet expertly through the narrow streets of Manhattan and down Park Avenue. Brandt hung on to Natasha's seat as they started catching their first glimpses of the Chitauri invading force. Everyone was silent, looking at the incredible sight. "I like my bad guys better," Brandt told his brother.

"I don't know," Clint said. "I kinda like the challenge."

"You would," Brandt groaned.

They flew past Stark Tower. "It's like Trump Tower," Natasha said.

"Yeah, but with more ego and better hair," Clint said. Something caught his eye and he looked down at the exterior patio on Stark's monument to himself. "Nat," he said urgently, and pointed.

Natasha leaned forward. Loki was standing there. "I see him," she said. She prepped the exterior gun as Clint swung them in for a better shot.

The god fired at them with his staff. Brandt felt and saw the jet's left wing explode.

Clint swore in Arabic. Brandt had taught the phrase to him after Dubai. "Hang on everybody!" He did his best to stay on course trying to find a place to land the damaged jet. Once again, Loki had gotten the upper hand, and Brandt could tell his brother was _not_ happy.

"Might wanna buckle in, Agent Brandt," Steve advised. Brandt agreed as he threw himself into the jump seat behind Natasha and fumbled with the harness. Clint guided the jet over the top of a group of pedestrians, cussing in every language he knew, including a few Brandt couldn't pinpoint, but every third word was "Loki." The jet groaned, screeched, and finally dropped, slamming into the street. Brandt saw Cap go flying from the corner of his eye, hitting the row of parachutes. Natasha and Clint were thrown forward but their belts kept them from going through the windshield. The jet skidded sideways to a stop. Clint checked all his limbs, then he looked back. "Will, Cap, you guys all right?" he asked.

"Ace landing," Steve said, and Clint smirked.

"Thought you were in the Army," Clint said, "They didn't teach you how to deal with rough landings?"

"I wasn't a paratrooper, and I was in the _Army_ , not the Army _Air Force_ ," Steve shot back. "And the last landing I went through like that I didn't exactly walk away from."

"I'm still in one piece," Brandt told him, offering him a thumbs up.

"I'm fine too, thanks for asking," Natasha said from the copilot's chair.

"Aw Tash I know you can handle yourself," Clint replied. "It's these two amateurs here I worry about."

"Amateurs?" Brandt snorted.

"I've been doin' this a lot longer than you have, _son_ ," Steve retorted. "Now…let's get out there," Steve said. He looked at Brandt. "You may want to sit this one out, Agent Brandt."

Brandt raised an eyebrow. "Don't think so," he said. He looked at Clint. "I'm not gonna hide in here while my big brother's out savin' the world."

"You're not trained for this," Natasha said, coming in on Clint"s side.

"Really, and the SHIELD handbook covers Norse gods and alien invasions?" Brandt countered.

Clint rolled his eyes. "Don't argue with him Nat, you'll lose every time." He hit the button for the cargo bay and jumped up from his seat. "He's the stubborn one in the family."

Natasha rolled her eyes after Clint went past her. "Right. Sure he is."

The four of them ran down the ramp and out into the streets. The Chitauri were well on their way to making Midtown look like a war zone. A car was on fire to their left. People were screaming and panicking left and right. "Damn," Brandt seethed. "Where do we start?"

Steve looked down the street. The street was elevated over a pedestrian area, and the people below the street were like fish in a barrel. "They're sitting ducks down there," he said.

Clint keyed in something on his bow, and Brandt heard a whirring sound as the cylinder rotated, plugging in arrow tips to the empty shafts. "Go," Clint told Cap.

"We've got this," Natasha added, slamming a clip into her pistol.

"You sure you can hold them off?" Steve asked them.

Clint yanked an arrow from his quiver and strung it. "Captain, it would be my genuine pleasure," he told him. He was itching to get his fingers firing at anything that even remotely smelled of Loki. He had a score to settle.

Brandt smiled. This was the brother he knew and loved.

Steve nodded, then took off at a leaping sprint.

"Will!"

Brandt looked over the side to see Ethan, Jane and Benji. All three of his IMF teammates were shellshocked at the events transpiring around them. He grinned, relieved. "I'll be back!" he yelled to Clint.

Clint looked at Natasha. "His team," Clint said.

"Funny," Natasha said. "I thought he was on ours."

And then there was no time to talk.

It came so naturally to the both of them. He was circling and aiming high while she kept low, covering his exposed back. When she rolled forward he took a few steps back, always having her in sight and yet having confidence that she was fine and taking care of herself. They'd worked together so long it was like breathing.

He'd made the right call in Budapest. He'd always known it, but days like today it was just reinforced.

_**Budapest** _

_'She's got an impressive resume,' Clint said as he perused the file Fury set in front of him. 'We could use someone like her.'_

_'She's been on the other side of us for too long,' Fury replied._

_Clint looked at his superior. 'What is it you want me to do, Director?' he asked, certain, though, that he already knew the answer._

_'She's a roadblock, Barton. One we need removed.'_

_Clint tapped the photo. 'You're sure we can't persuade the Black Widow to join the side of good?'_

_Fury's tone was grim. 'No,' he said flatly._

_Clint nodded. 'All right then.'_

* * *

_He set the quiver for grapple and fired an arrow into the crumbling brick and mortar. He tugged on it a few times to make sure it wouldn't come out with this weight. Then he used the bow and scaled the side of the building. There were two guards up top, which an arrow and a haymaker took care of nice and quiet. He stepped over to the skylight and glanced down._

_'Target acquired,' he said quietly._

_She was beautiful. Long red hair, big green eyes. In the photo she'd been wearing a business suit but tonight, Natasha Romanoff wore a red minidress that left little to the imagination. Clint blinked to clear his mind and chose to focus on the people in the room with her. He was supposed to have gotten here before the meeting, but one of the bridges had been closed into Pest and he'd had to find another. 'Gonna be hard to be discreet with all these people around,' he muttered. 'I take her out with all these people around, I could start World War III.' It wasn't an exaggeration. Clint could count at least four different types of shoulder fired missiles and several different crates of guns. He watched the exchange. She was handling the mediation like a pro. Slick and smooth and sexy. He didn't know for sure who was paying her but she was earning her keep tonight. Too bad she wouldn't be able to enjoy the spoils afterwards. 'What do you want me to do?' he asked Fury._

_'If they blow each other up it's nothing to us. But she needs to be taken out.' Fury's voice echoed in his ear._

_So he took aim._

_And put the arrow into the Bulgarian who was trying to pull a pistol on the Black Widow. The men in the room erupted in several different languages, each accusing the other of compromising the trade. The Black Widow, meanwhile, was making a swift exit. And she looked pissed._

_'Whoops,' Clint said. 'Pissed off the mistress assassin.'_

_And then he made out a few words in Russian and Hungarian from below. 'Kill the woman.'_

_'Well hell,' he said. 'Can't have that.' He rappelled off the roof and went in search of Natasha Romanoff. He had to get to her first. 'Sir,' he said as he ran, 'I'm letting you know that I'm disobeying a directive to kill the Black Widow.'_

_'Excuse me?' Fury demanded._

_'She's an asset,' Clint said, ducking around a corner._ Damn it, where'd she go? _'We need her.'_

_'You don't get to make that call, soldier,' Fury warned him._

_Clint grinned in spite of it all. 'I'm making it anyway.' He poked his head out from behind a stack of pallets._

_His eyes met the barrel of a Russian made pistol. He glanced up the barrel to see Natasha Romanoff's angry green eyes glaring at him. 'Sir, I'm gonna need to call you back.' He tugged his earpiece out as he stood up slowly. 'You should be halfway to Siberia by now,' he told her in Russian._

_'Who are you?' she demanded._

_'The guy that just saved your ass.'_

_'You ruined my exchange. Now they want me dead.'_

_'They would've killed you anyway,' Clint told her matter of factly. 'I bought you time to get out.'_

_'You're an American?' She switched to flawless English._

_'Like a bad penny,' he said. 'We always turn up when something bad goes down in the world.'_

_She pulled the hammer back. 'They will think I doublecrossed them and ran with their money.' She put the gun at his chin. 'You've signed my death warrant.'_

_'I was the one who had the warrant,' he said. 'That arrow was supposed to be for you.'_

_"Then use it," Natasha hissed._

_"Which one were you sleeping with?" he asked her._

_Her eyes flashed in the dark. She rattled off an insult in Russian that would have made any other man blush. "Oh come on, Natasha," he said, using her first name, which only irked her more. "I know your skill set...it's pretty specific."_

_"I'm not the first woman to use that to get what I want," she told him._

_"No, you're not. Problem is, you're too good, honey. And we're tired of cleaning up your messes."_

_"Yet you haven't killed me yet," Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Why?"_

_His response was to put an arrow into the man who had snuck up behind her. 'I like you,' he said. 'We could use someone like you.'_

_'Who is 'we'?' she asked. She brought her gun to her shoulder and fired, the shot landing between the eyes of another man._

_Clint looked at her. 'We get out of this and I'll explain everything,' he offered. "You're between a rock and a hard place, Black Widow. So either they'll kill you nice and slow...or you let me get you out of here and live to die another day." He keyed in the code for his explosive tipped arrows and waited._

_She put another clip in her gun. 'Fine.' She looked at him and nodded once. They both came up shooting as the two cartels decided they didn't care about each other. They just wanted the Black Widow dead. He pulled arrows as fast as he could, and she'd emptied one clip and loaded another (where she was keeping the spares, Clint didn't have a clue, but he was_ very _curious). 'We gotta move,' Clint decided. He looked around, his eyes resting on the roof. 'What comes down must come back up,' he said in Russian._

_Natasha eyed him, confused. 'What?'_

_He pointed to where his grappling hook remained locked in the side of the building. 'You first,' he said. He fired an arrow into one man and she tucked her gun into a concealed holster. 'Bet that didn't come with the dress,' he told her._

_'It matches my purse,' she shot back as she started climbing up the rope._

_He grinned._

_Clint kept Natasha covered until she was safely over the roof. For a moment, there was silence._ Don't you dare take off _, he thought. Then he heard small arms fire from the roof. 'You might want to get up here,' Natasha called to him. 'They just went for the grenade launcher.'_

_'That's my exit cue,' he agreed. She covered him from up top as he scrambled up the rope. Clint rolled over the lip as a shoulder-fired grenade slammed into the wall inches from where his head had been. Brick and mortar rained down over them. Clint reached into his combat trousers and pulled out a cell phone. He punched four numbers and waited. 'This is Hawkeye requesting immediate evac.'_

_'Hawkeye?' she snorted between shots._

_'You don't think it's accurate?' He asked, sinking an arrow without looking into the man who'd made his way up the fire escape._

_She raised an eyebrow. 'Perhaps,' Natasha admitted._

_'Says the Black Widow,' Clint muttered. A helicopter sprayed machine gun fire down on the ground, and Clint helped Natasha into the chopper. Someone yanked him into the helo, and he looked into the eyes of Agent Phil Coulson. 'The Director wants to speak with you,' Coulson told the archer._

_'Yeah,' Clint smirked. 'I'll bet he does.' He nodded to Natasha. 'Agent Phil Coulson, the infamous Black Widow.'_

_Phil studied her. Then he looked at Clint. 'Is there a reason she's still alive?'_

_Clint looked at her out of the corner of his eye. 'We'll see," he said finally. "We'll see."_

* * *

A month later, they were in the field together in Thailand on their first mission. He had her back, and she had his.

As the two of them stood shoulder to shoulder in Midtown, covering Captain America as he took off down the street, preparing to take on an army of aliens from outer space controlled by a mischief-loving god, Natasha muttered under her breath, 'this is like Budapest all over again.'

He glanced at her sideways as he nocked an arrow and frowned. 'You and I remember Budapest _very_ differently,' he replied.

And then they were firing. _Now_ this _part,_ Clint thought, _this part's familiar._ He kept pulling arrows and firing at anything that wasn't human. In his mind, they all had Loki's face. _This's for you, Coulson_ , he thought, and put an arrow through the heart of the nearest Chitauri warrior.


	12. This All Seems...Horrible

"Guys!" Brandt said, jumping over a piece of concrete to meet his team. "Holy shit it's good to see you guys. How'd you find us?"

"Ah, we followed the path of destruction," Benji said, still wide-eyed at the chaos around them. "Figured you had to be at the end of it."

"So you're sayin' this is my fault?" Brandt kidded.

"Well, you've been making a habit of it lately," Ethan put in, and Brandt nodded.

"Guess I have. Look, I don't have time to explain the whole thing. Just pretend they're Serbians-"

Ethan snorted.

"-and we've got to get these people out of here. Get them outta Midtown. Send 'em down toward Times Square or out toward the river, but out of here."

"And where do you plan on being?" Jane asked him. He caught her tone. She was _pissed_.

"My brother needs backup," Will said. Now that he had Clint back he was afraid to let him too far out of his sight. Plus, Loki was around, and who knew how his little mindgames worked... He looked at Jane. "You're pissed at me for not saying goodbye, aren't you?"

"More than I can say," Jane said.

Her tone sounded...angry. But not just angry...there was something underlying that made Brandt want to open his mouth to apologize-

"Incoming!" Ethan yelled, and the four of them dove for cover behind a covered bus stop that shattered as a Chitauri fighter slammed into it. Brandt saw the shadow of a man fly over the top of them.

"Holy…was that Iron Man?" Benji asked, his mouth agape.

Brandt grinned. "I'll introduce the two of you," he offered. "Good luck," he told Ethan and Jane.

"Good luck?" Jane repeated in disbelief. "That's all you've got?"

Brandt paused. Then he turned with a classic Brandt family grin. "Kick a few through some windows," he offered. "You're good at that."

And then he was gone.

"Serbians?" Jane repeated, looking at Ethan.

Their fearless leader shrugged. "Yep," he said.

* * *

Clint was pulling a little boy from a bus when he caught sight of his brother headed back toward them. Brandt laid down cover fire as Clint helped the boy down and told him to run like hell, hoping the kid's mom wasn't listening. A Chitauri fighter was on him. Clint slammed an elbow into the alien's solar plexus, whipped out an arrow, and fired it close range into the Chitauri's eye. Just as quickly, he yanked another one from his quiver, turned, and fired at one closing in on Natasha.

He ripped the arrow from the eye socket, jumped onto the roof of a cab and fired three more arrows, impaling the ribs where the hearts would be. He didn't know if they had them, and he didn't care. His only focus was killing as many of the bastards as possible, and keeping his family safe-

The thought brought him up short. _Family_. Will was, of course…but no, Natasha was too. He looked down. Nat was in trouble. He fired two arrows, then he took a dive forward and slid across the street, aiming at one that was coming at her from behind. _I'll give that one some thought…later._

* * *

From behind an overturned Acura, Brandt slammed another clip into his M1 and laid down several rounds, knocking four of the warriors on their asses. A blur of red and blue whipped by him, and he saw that Steve was back to help. Cap was badass, throwing the shield like a Frisbee and taking out several of the Chitauri at once.

But more were coming.

He heard it before he saw it, and whipped around, putting the barrel of the M1 into the Chitauri that had managed to sneak up on him and blew it backwards, riddling it full of holes. He turned around. Another alien was facing him with a glowing staff not unlike Loki's. It fired, and Brandt dove behind a chunk of the concrete bridge. Rock sprayed him as he popped up and laid a row of fire. The Chitauri staggered, then fell forward, its staff clanging to the ground.

A bright flash knocked Brandt off his feet and into a car. Clint was there in an instant. "You okay, little brother?"

"Don't call me little," Brandt growled automatically. "Yeah, I'm good." _Except for the broken ribs..._

"Yeah," Clint said, surveying the carnage. "Yeah, I can see that."

Thor had arrived. Brandt noticed the god was holding a hand to his side. But whatever it was didn't seem to be bothering him too badly. "Greetings," he managed to say. "How goes the fight?"

"If the tide doesn't change soon, we're screwed," Brandt told him. "But that lightning bit helped."

The warrior nodded solemnly. "I shall continue doing all I can."

"You okay?" Brandt asked.

Thor considered the question. "No," he admitted. "But it will not affect my prowess in battle," he said, straightening up.

Brandt nodded. "That's the Thor we need on our side."

Thor clapped him on the shoulder, knocking Brandt forward. Brandt caught himself with his other leg. "Then that is the Thor you shall have, Agent Brandt."

"What the hell is that?" Natasha asked. Clint heard it too…a low buzzing sound. "Motorcycle engine," Clint guessed.

It got louder, and Clint turned around to see Dr. Bruce Banner, wearing a pair of pants that were a size too large, on a motorcycle that looked like it belonged in the Museum of Natural History. The doctor climbed off the bike and looked at Natasha, Brandt, Steve and Clint. "Well," he drawled. "This all seems…horrible."

"I've seen worse," Natasha said slowly, her eyes on Banner at all times.

"Nice to see ya again, Doc," Brandt hailed his friend. Bruce gave him half a smile. He looked over at Natasha. "Yeah...sorry about that..." he told her.

"No, it's okay," Natasha said, glancing over at Clint. "We could use a little...worse."

Steve said, "We got him."

In his ear, Brandt heard Tony Stark from somewhere above them. "Banner? Tell him to suit up. I'm bringin' the party to you."

Brandt and Clint exchanged looks. "Party?" Clint said.

There was a dull roar in the air around them that echoed down the buildings. A giant shadow blocked the sun, and suddenly, Iron Man came zipping around the corner, followed by a… "What _is_ that thing?" Brandt asked.

"I don't see how that's a party," Natasha gaped.

Steve looked at Bruce. "Doctor….now would be a good time for you to get angry," he told him.

"Is this a good idea?" Brandt queried. Banner looked at him. "Hey, no offense, but it didn't end so well last time."

Bruce looked at Steve. "That's my secret, Cap," he told him. He looked over at Brandt and nodded. Then he faced the Leviathan. "I'm always angry…"

The Hulk ripped from Bruce's small frame, and threw a bodybuilder on steroids fist into the Leviathan's nose. The great metal beast folded like an accordion over the Avengers' heads. Everyone ducked for cover.

* * *

"Ethan, man, are you _seeing_ this?" Benji asked, as the Hulk roared and the three agents took cover under an overhang as the metal flying worm (Jane's description) collapsed over their heads.

"I can see it," Ethan replied. "That doesn't mean I believe what I see."

"My thoughts exactly," Jane said. She used a piece of rebar and broke the windshield of a Yellow Cab so that the occupants could climb out. "Go," she told them. "Don't stop, don't stare, just run."

The cab driver ignored her, and let loose a string of curses in Slovak as he looked up in time to see the Leviathan collapse over the top of them. "Move your ass," Jane told him in the same language.

"You seen Brandt?" Ethan asked, dropping the clip from his gun and slapping in another.

"Last I saw he was putting many, many holes into the creepy aliens," Benji said.

"Benji!" Jane's voice called a warning, and the tech ducked as a flash of blue light flew over his head and through the windows of the shopping complex they were in front of. Jane raised her gun and emptied a clip into the Chitauri. He dropped and Jane let her clip drop and slammed in another.

"Come on, guys," Ethan said. "Let's keep moving."

"Guys," Benji said, looking at Ethan and Jane. "Do you realize what we are right now?"

Jane looked at him. "Slightly terrified, beyond confused, and dying for a drink?" she asked him.

"No," Benji said. "We're totally superheroes."

"What are you talking about?" Ethan asked.

"Think about it," Benji said with a happy grin. "We are rescuing people and fighting alongside superheroes-real ones, with capes and superpowers and everything-against an invading alien army."

"Doesn't that make us sidekicks?" Ethan asked, helping an elderly couple take cover behind a giant planter as something flew over his head. He popped a couple of shots at it, nicked the flying contraption's engine, and sent it spiraling into a phone booth.

"They're still superheroes," Benji pointed out. Ethan couldn't argue with that.

"Check this out," Jane said, and even she was in awe.

The three of them turned as Iron Man landed with a metallic clank inbetween Brandt's brother and a beautiful redheaded woman that reminded Ethan of Jane, a little. Next to Clint, a great green beast roared at the sky as Clint notched an arrow and aimed it skyward, following anything that moved.

A Chitauri sent a blast of blue spiraling their way. The three IMF agents dove out of the way. Ethan heard the repeat of a gun, and something then exploded off to his left.

"Quit staring," Brandt chided them with a cheeky smile. "That'll get ya killed."

* * *

"You call it, Cap," Tony told Steve as he stood next to him.

Clint looked over at his childhood hero. Captain America, the war hero, had arrived. He could practically see the gears turning as he tactically planned their strategy. He'd seen that look before, hell, he'd used it himself. This was the look of someone totally in their element, doing what they did best. Nat said he got the same look when he was up on a building looking down over a target.

"Hawkeye," Steve turned to Clint. Clint stood up a little straighter. This _was_ Captain America, after all. "I need you on that roof, eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, you've got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or turn it to ash."

Clint glanced up. _That_ roof was about 30 stories high. He studied it. It would give him an excellent vantage point over midtown Manhattan. He turned to Tony. "Wanna give me a lift?" he asked.

He was sure inside the helmet Stark was rolling his eyes. He wasn't a damn airline. "Right," he heard Tony sigh. "Better clench up, Legolas." He fired his thrusters and grabbed the back of Clint's vest before rocketing into the air.

"Jesus Christ!" Clint swore as Tony set him on the ledge. It felt like he'd just been shot from an ejector seat. If he was shorter after this, he was taking it out of Tony's ass.

"Thanks for choosing Avenger Air," Tony told him. "And for not throwing up on my shoes."

"You're welcome," Clint said dryly.

Clint waited until Tony had rocketed around a corner before throwing up on the rooftop. He took a couple breaths...and then went to work. He punched the code for his regular arrows and felt the cylinder vibrate on his back as the heads screwed into place. "Legolas, my ass," he muttered as he took aim at a passing Chitauri fighter and dropped him with a shot that severed its spinal cord at the neck.

"Ah," he said. "Hey Will, got a little tip for you. Aim for the base of the neck."

* * *

Down on the ground, Brandt nodded. "Gotcha." He looked at Ethan, Jane & Benji. "OK," he said. "Here's the plan. Take 'em out with head shots or aim for the base of the neck, sever the spinal cord." He looked at Benji. "Benj, you need to get to the top of Stark Tower and see if you can shut down that thing on top of it."

Benji looked at him. "You're serious?" He pointed up at the roof. "Seriously?"

"Deadly," Brandt responded. "It's okay, I'll go with you. You're a smart guy and it's probably got some kind of computer trigger. Nobody knows them better than you. Ethan and Jane, Cap and Natasha are gonna need help keeping the fight here." He grinned. "Show 'em what superspies can do."

"When did you become our fearless leader?" Jane asked him.

"I'm okay with this," Ethan responded. He looked at his teammate with a smile. "His plans have been pretty good as of late."

"The last one ended with him in the hospital," Jane countered.

"Guys, I'm still here," Brandt said. "Just don't stop shootin.!" He grabbed Benji's arm. "Ready, buddy?"

"No," Benji replied as Brandt dragged him away. "Clint, do me a favor, man, don't let anything shoot me," he told his brother as he and Benji started to weave their way through the destruction.

"I'm a little busy," Clint shot back from the roof. "I don't have time to babysit you."

"We're headed for Stark Tower," Brandt said. "Just keep the path clear."

* * *

Up on his roof, Clint rolled his eyes. "Yes, _Dad_ ," he said. He glanced four blocks away and caught sight of Iron Man. "Stark, you've got a lot of 'em on your tail," he told him.

"Yeah, noticed," he heard Tony mutter in his ear.

"Well, they can't bank worth a damn," Clint told him with a smirk. He'd been watching. Those flying machines couldn't corner for _anything_. An engine was revving behind him, and he aimed his bow _backwards_ and fired an arrow as he watched Stark come flying down the street in front of him. Behind him, he heard a satisfying explosion.

He looked down. _Shit_ , he thought, and took aim.

* * *

Four Chitauri came pouring out of an office building just as Brandt and Benji turned the corner. Brandt swore, this time in Russian. "Got your gun, Benji?" he asked his friend.

"Yeah," he heard Benji say mutely behind him.

"Hey." Brandt looked at him, putting his hands on his friends's shoulders. "Remember Mumbai?" he asked. Benji nodded. "Just like that." Then Brandt fired at something over Benji's head as Benji took aim and mowed down a Chitauri like it was a paper target.

Another alien was coming up behind Brandt, and Benji sighted it before a black arrow with black feathers lodged itself in the Chitauri's eye. Benji's jaw dropped. "Ah…Will?" he asked.

"Yeah?" Brandt asked, throwing an elbow into a Chitauri's neck, grabbing its spear and shoving it through its ribcage.

"How far are we from your brother right now?"

Brandt thought about it. "Mmm….nine hundred yards?" He frowned. "Well, and that's before the thirty stories. I was never good at math, that's Clint's job."

"Twenty-seven hundred feet…plus thirty stories…" Benji muttered as he started running again. "With an arrow. Wow."

"Without a scope," Clint added in Brandt's ear, knowing his brother's teammate couldn't hear him.

"Show off," Brandt mumbled, but he knew his brother would hear it. In his ears, he heard Clint laughing.


	13. The Fightin' Side of Me

_Fact. I'm standing in the middle of Midtown Manhattan. Fact. The place looks like a war zone. Fact. This time the evil isn't terrorists or madmen…it's aliens. Yeah. Real freaking aliens!_ As Jane Carter sent another alien sprawling, her mind was still trying to wrap her thoughts around current events. She heard sirens behind her, but didn't have time to turn as she jumped up on a table near the small café she and Ethan had taken refuge at. She looked over to see her teammate engaged in an MMA match with one of the aliens…a Chitauri, someone had said earlier. She shook her head as she reloaded. Ethan looked like he was _enjoying_ himself. She'd seen that smirk on his face before, in Moscow. The man loved an adrenaline rush.

"It'll take the National Guard another coupla hours to get in here," she heard a thick Queens accent say, and she looked over her shoulder. A slew of NYPD cars had pulled up, lights blazing, and they were just now starting to see the scope of what was happening.

"A couple of hours? Do they know what's happening here?" a burly cop demanded of his partner.

_Does anybody_? Jane wondered.

"You have people in those buildings, there, and there," a new voice said. The voice was commanding, deep, and gave the impression that it was in charge. She looked up to see a young man, probably in his mid-20s, in a star-spangled red, white, and blue uniform. He held a round shield with a white star emblazoned dead center. "You're gonna want to set up a perimeter as far back as 39th. Take these people down the streets or into the subways, just get them out of here."

The burly cop raised an eyebrow. "And why should we listen to you?"

Before he could answer, the man with the shield easily beat the hell out of two Chitauri. His shield almost cut one in half. Jane saw one sneaking up from behind the car he was standing on, and she put a bullet through the driver's side window of the car, out the passenger side glass, and into the forehead of the alien. A pair of blue eyes caught her gaze. Then he looked down at the cop.

He got on the radio. "I need a perimeter set up and evac..." his voice trailed away as he jogged down the street to relay the messages.

The star-spangled man hopped off the car and helped Jane stand. "Nice shootin', ma'am," he told her. "You saved my six." He frowned. "Are you SHIELD?"

"Ah…no," Jane admitted. "I'm on Agent Brandt's team."

He considered that. "He's lucky to have you."

"I…he doesn't…" He gave her a two fingered salute, and was a block away before she could come up with a coherent response.

"Who the hell was that?" Ethan asked, coming up to her and slapping a clip in her hand.

"I don't know," Jane replied, her eyes on where the mystery man had been. She frowned. "I think he was from Brooklyn."

* * *

Any other day, Brandt would have marveled at Tony Stark's ingenuity as they rode the elevators up to the top of the penthouse. Benji was in heaven. "I'm in Tony Stark's house, in his lab, in his elevator…."

Brandt rolled his eyes. "And I thought me and Captain America was bad," he groaned.

Benji turned, eyes wide. "You know Captain America?"

The elevator dinged, and they stepped into the penthouse. Brandt grabbed Benji by the collar and yanked him back into the elevator.

"I am a _god_ you worthless creature!" He knew that voice. _Loki_. But he also knew the familiar bellow of anger, and then felt the floor shake.

"What the hell is that?" Benji demanded as the building rocked. He braced himself in the corner of the elevator.

Then they heard, "Puny god," in a low growl…that almost sounded like a scoff.

Brandt shook his head. "Hulk," he replied quietly. "Shut up, Benji, and come on. You don't want to meet the Hulk, trust me." _Or Loki_. He poked his head out into the open room. There was a great hole in the floor, and he caught a glimpse of green as Banner-the Hulk-jumped out the Hulk-sized hole in the windows. He grinned, despite himself. Banner was definitely in there. The voice that had said, "puny god" had had his friend's inflection. He made a mental note to tell Bruce that later. "OK, Benj, up you go."

"You're not coming?" Benji asked.

"I'm gonna get back down on the street," he told his friend. "You've got this. There's one guy up there, and he's mostly harmless."

"Mostly?" Benji repeated as the elevator doors closed.

* * *

Clint was running out of ammo. And as he kept one eye on his targets and one eye at the portal in the sky the Tesseract had created…he was running out of hope. "Shit, there's so many of them," he muttered from his vantage point. He could see Thor perched on the Chrysler building, aiming bolts at a few of them, but for every four he took out, eight more poured from the sky.

The door to the fire escape banged open, and he was no longer alone on the roof. He launched an arrow at the incoming warrior, impaling him in the eye, punched another one and threw him over the side, and reached back in his quiver for an arrow even as he dodged a blue staff and placed a fist in the Chitauri's windpipe.

His hands grabbed air. He had no arrows left. _Shit!_ He was a sitting duck on that ledge. Clint looked over the edge, estimating distance. Then he yanked the arrow from the Chitauri's eye socket and jammed it into the quiver. He set the head for Grapple. Then, before he could talk himself out of it, Clint leapt off the ledge. He twisted midair so he was facing skyward, nocked the grappling hook and fired. The hook's heads chewed into the sandstone and mortar and held fast. Clint held onto the bow for dear life as he fell eight floors. A bank of windows appeared and he aimed for one. His body slammed through the glass. He toppled head over foot and rolled onto his back, landing hard on the quiver. He heard bone meet metal and Kevlar and he cried out in pain.

He lay there, stunned.

* * *

Up on the roof of Stark Tower, Benji got his first good look at the Tesseract. For a moment, the tech's eyes were drawn to the blue wisps inside the force field around the outside. Then he spotted someone moving around, and caught a glimpse of blue plaid and blue jeans. He knew the man. "Dr. Erik Selvig?" Benji said aloud.

Something came flying over the top of Benji's head, skidded in the gravel and landed with catlike grace near the edge of the roof. A blast of blue nailed the energy field around the portal machine and sent both Benji and Dr. Selvig flying. Benji lifted his head slowly, shaking it to clear the spots in front of his eyes. He looked up at the unidentified object that had landed on the roof…and his jaw dropped.

The woman who had just fallen from the sky caught his eyes. "Are you with Agent Brandt?" she asked him.

"I…y-yeah, he's m-my-"

She rolled her eyes and muttered an insult in Russian that Benji didn't quite catch. "Are you good with computers?" she asked him.

"Y-y-"

"Боже мой!" she groaned. "Yes or no?"

"Yes," Benji managed to squeak out.

"You any good with computers?"

"They're basically all the same," Benji told her.

"I need your help," she told him, then frowned. The words were foreign, coming from her. "We need to shut this thing down and do it fast."

"You want me to shut down an interstellar portal?" Benji clarified.

"Can you?"

Benji scrambled over to the computer and flipped it open. He studied the program. "Ah….maybe?" he answered.

"I built in a failsafe," Dr. Selvig's accented voice spoke up. Benji turned. "Loki's staff…it might be able to shut down the portal." He pointed over the edge of the roof. "And I'm looking right at it."

"Well, that's convenient isn't it?" Benji asked. The woman eyed him. "Well, thank God there's a way to turn it off," he clarified. "Don't know if you've noticed but we're getting our asses handed to us down there."

"Yeah," she said, looking down over the edge of the roof. "I noticed." She looked at Benji. "I'm going down there to get the staff. Stay here."

He glanced around. "Where the hell else am I gonna go?"

"You sound like Clint," she muttered as she turned for the stairwell.

"Yeah….try hanging with his brother sometime," Benji shot back as he helped Selvig stand and get to the computer.

* * *

Down on the ground, Brandt was helping two NYPD officers evacuate a corner bodega. A Chitauri ship skidded across the avenue and came up screeching and grinding to land against the cruiser. It lay there for a moment, then exploded. Brandt covered the young man he was helping as debris went flying over their heads. He shoved the kid forward when it was clear. "Go!" he commanded. Brandt looked up.

"Guys," he said, frowning. "Where the hell is Clint?"

It was Cap who answered. "Isn't he on the roof?"

Brandt shook his head, knowing Cap couldn't see him. "No. He's not." He started across the avenue. "I'm gonna go find him." He looked up, spotting a broken window in an otherwise untouched (amazingly) bank of windows of the office building Clint had been perched on. A black cable snaked around in the wind, and Brandt traced it upward to a silver-shafted arrow.

A giant shadow loomed over the street and Brandt barely heard Cap telling him to stay put before one of the giant snakelike ships came roaring down the street- closely followed by Stark. Brandt dodged the flashes of blue energy, stopping short next to a car and then diving into the building. One of the Chitauri was inside, menacing two office workers. Brandt jumped on the thing's back and yanked backwards, pulling it off balance. The alien went for his blue spear but Brandt kicked it away and it went skidding across the tile floor in the lobby. He landed two punches where the thing's kidneys ought to be and it roared at him, trying to throw him off. Brandt reached for his gun and fired two shots into the back of the alien's head, severing its spinal cord and putting one in its skull. It collapsed with Brandt on top of it. He stared at the ceiling for a moment and then rolled off its back. The two workers were staring at him, wide eyed. "You're welcome," Brandt muttered as he painfully got to his feet. He made his way to the elevator and punched all the floors. Brandt hoped to God his brother was in the building...


	14. The Beginning of the End

Ethan Hunt heard it from a long way off. It was a sound he'd heard more than once in his lifetime. A low, droning sound from above his head. He glanced up. Jane looked at him questioningly. "Fighter jet," he told Jane. "Wonder if they're bringin' in the National Guard?"

Jane shook her head. "They just radioed, it's gonna take them three hours to get anybody here."

"We might not have three hours," Ethan said. He took a deep breath. "Never thought we were gonna go out like this," he admitted finally. "We've beaten arms dealers, terrorists, nukes…"

"All that normal stuff," Jane cut in dryly.

Ethan chuckled shortly. "But this…" He waved a hand around. "I can't see an end. They just keep on coming."

"Then we're gonna keep on coming."

Jane recognized the familiar Brooklyn accent and looked up to see the guy with the shield and a blonde man in body armor coming up to them. "It's not over," he told them. "Not yet."

"I know you," Ethan frowned.

"Captain Steve Rogers," he introduced himself. "You must be with Agent Brandt."

"Yes, sir," Ethan replied.

"We're not finished here," Rogers continued. "It's not over. We're not done."

"We shall fight until they are dead, or we are," the blonde man in the armor said.

"Not exactly comforting," Jane pointed out.

"The measure of a true warrior comes when it seems as though there is no hope. He is the one who finds it," he replied. "The battle will go on."

Jane glanced at Ethan. He nodded.

"Then so will we," Ethan told them.

Something went streaking by their heads, and Ethan caught the flash of red and gold that was Iron Man headed out to sea.

"Where the hell is he going? Steve muttered. "Stark? What's going on?"

Ethan couldn't hear the response, but he didn't like the way Rogers' face paled as he listened to the voice in his ear.

He looked up at Thor, Ethan and Jane. "We have a…situation," he said finally.

* * *

Inside the building's fire exit stairs, Brandt's feet froze on the cement stairs. _Incoming nuke_ …oh God. He slumped to the stairs, his back against the wall. _This was it_.

Well, if he was gonna die, it wasn't gonna be alone. He pushed himself up and burst through a door.

"Clint?"

The sprinkler system had come on, and he was soaked through. He didn't know how many floors he'd cleared at this point. All he knew was he hadn't found Clint yet, but he wouldn't stop until he did. "Clint, buddy, come on. Where the hell are you?"

"Here," a weak voice answered him back. Brandt took off at a dead run and found his brother lying on his back in a puddle. Clint grimaced but managed a weak smile. "Hi Will."

"Jesus," Brandt said, kneeling next to him. "Are you okay?"

Clint shook his head. "Can't feel my legs," he said. "Landed pretty hard on my quiver...think I mighta broken something..." He grimaced. "And there's that pesky concussion from earlier…"

Brandt looked at his brother's boots. "Move your left leg, Clint," he commanded.

Clint chuckled. "Which one's that..."

"Ah, good you're still cracking jokes, you asshole. Move your leg, damn it."

Clint frowned. "Aren't I?"

Brandt's blood ran cold. "Don't screw with me, big brother," he said.

"M not..."

Brandt looked at his legs. They lay still. "One last time," he said desperately. "Come on, man."

"I probably…deserve this," Clint groaned.

"Say that again?" Brandt gaped, looking down at his brother. "You can shut your mouth right now, big brother, 'cause you heard Natasha. None of this was your fault."

"I screwed up, Will. Couldn't fight him off…"

"Neither could Selvig! Or any of those other agents." He looked into his brother's matching eyes. "Just because you're stubborn doesn't make you invincible." Brandt grabbed his brother's hand. "You can't spend all your life up in the rafters, Clint. Eventually you'll have to come down and face what happened. But that day won't be today, because goddamnit we need you. We go home for Christmas, you and I will take a week and throw you your damned pity party. But _not_ today."

"I almost killed her, Will," Clint said. "Almost killed you."

"But you didn't. And neither Natasha or I would have let you anyway. You're not as tough as you think you are," he joked. His brother gave him half a smile.

"Can't tell…Mom and Dad about this."

"Mom would never let us leave the house again," Brandt agreed. "We'll just let her give us the deathgrip and hold onto us and put up with the 'remember when' stuff and old movies until she feels better." He looked at his brother. "Speaking of feeling better. Move your goddamn leg."

Clint's face scrunched in determination as he willed every nerve in his body to connect.

Brandt saw Clint's left foot twitch. He let out the breath he'd been holding. "Thank God," he said. "Come on, can you sit up?"

"Hey, one victory at a time," Clint said. He grabbed Brandt's forearm as his brother pushed and pulled him to a sitting position. He gently worked the quiver off his back and set it aside. His bow lay two feet away.

"Stark...you know that's a one way trip," he heard part of Cap's response to something Tony was doing.

"Don't wait up," Tony replied, then cut communication.

Clint froze, grabbing Brandt's arm. "What is Stark doing?" He asked him.

Brandt paused. "Fury radioed about seven minutes ago. We've got incoming nuclear missile."

His brother's eyes widened. "And so Stark is..."

"Near as I can tell...hes FedExing it to the Chitauri...same day delivery."

"That's suicide!"

Brandt nodded. "Yeah...I think he knows..."

* * *

It was as if time stood still. On the ground, Steve, Ethan, Jane and Thor hustled the remaining people from Midtown into the subway tunnels. Steve kept trying to raise Tony on the comm but the billionaire either wouldn't-or couldn't- answer him. "I pushed him to this," he said miserably as they took cover in the subway entrance.

"How do you figure?" Ethan asked him. "Seems to me he made his own choice."

"I told him I never saw him making the sacrifice play," Steve said slowly.

Ethan considered that. "You make hard choices as a leader," he said after a minute. He glanced at Jane. "You push your team to give you their best 150% of the time. Our jobs…" He looked around at Steve, Thor, and Jane. "We all make the sacrifice play when we need to." He thought of Julia, and wondered where Brandt was. "And you trust that your team's got your back."

* * *

"Do you remember-" Brandt paused for a moment, and chuckled to himself. He looked at Clint. "When we told Mom that we were both gonna be spies for a living?"

Clint smiled, remembering. "Yeah. I thought she was gonna ground us, even at eighteen." He sighed. "I hated making her worry. I hated coming home after a mission, I tried so hard to clean up, to wait until the scars and bruises had faded but…she always saw through it."

"She always knew," Brandt agreed. "We never told her anything about what we did. But it was always like she knew."

"Did we make the right call?" Clint asked. "I mean, you and me. Dad was already a cop, she worried enough about him on a Baltimore street beat. And then you went to IMF and I went to SHIELD…" He chuckled. "Special Forces," he teased, imitating their father's gruff voice.

"You don't know _how_ special," Brandt finished the joke. He let out a breath. "Mom knew we'd have never made it with office jobs. We were Dad's kids, even when we were little."

"Robin Hood and Little John," Clint grinned, then grimaced. "Ow." He looked around. "How long?"

"Four minutes," Brandt said.

"I haven't heard anything," Clint said.

"Nobody's listening for anybody but Tony," Brandt said. He wondered where Bruce, and Natasha were. He thought about Ethan, and Jane and Benji. "I shoulda said goodbye," he said after a moment.

"Yeah," Clint agreed. "Me too."

Then, "Guys! I can close it!"

Clint jerked at the familiar voice. _Natasha._ "Nat?" he asked.

"Where the _hell_ have you been?" she demanded.

He laughed. "Busy doing stupid stuff."

"So nothing new then. Guys, I can close the portal!" Clint heard her pause. "What do you want me to do, Cap?" she was asking Steve.

"Stark just blew through the portal," Steve reported from his spot on the ground. There was silence. Then, "Do it."

Clint and Brandt heard a blast of static. Both brothers threw hands to their ears as the sound rocked their eardrums.

* * *

"Aim it there," Selvig was telling Natasha. "Right at the base."

Benji stood close to the doctor. "You sure you built in the failsafe?" he asked him.

Selvig pounded furiously at the keyboard. "We'll find out in a moment, won't we," he said flatly.

Natasha thrust Loki's spear into the energy field. It touched the Tesseract, then, as Benji watched, the whole thing seemed to collapse in on itself. A blast of energy shot sideways, knocking Natasha, Benji, and Selvig to the rooftop. Natasha's eyes looked skyward.

The hole was getting smaller.

* * *

On the ground, Steve, Thor, and the IMF team watched the portal above them start to shrink. "Come on, Stark," Steve willed his teammate to appear.

"Look," Ethan said, pointing up. They all saw it at once. The Iron Man was falling through the sky. Jane frowned.

"Something's not-"

"He isn't slowing down!" Thor beat her to it, and whipped Mjolnir into a frenzy to take off after his friend. Just as his feet were about to leave the ground, the Hulk roared into Midtown, snatching Tony midair like a major league outfielder. The beast half climbed, half slid down the side of the building before launching himself off and landing on his back, clutching Tony to his chest. The ground shook.

Steve and Thor rushed forward as the Hulk threw Tony unceremoniously to the side. Thor ripped off the faceplate and threw it. It skidded across the street to land in front of Ethan and Jane.

Tony wasn't moving. His eyes were closed. Steve could see the arc reactor flickering in his chest. He didn't understand the technology, but he understood the concept. _If the light goes out…_

Hulk roared. It echoed down the side of the buildings and rattled windows.

Tony snapped awake with a yell. "What the hell?!" he yelled, his eyes looking around. "What just happened?" He looked at Steve and frowned. "Please tell me nobody kissed me."

Steve looked around Midtown, to Thor, the Hulk, Ethan and Jane, and then Tony. "We won," he said, as if he couldn't believe it.

"Mission accomplished," Ethan muttered to Jane, and she smiled.

"You guys ever tried shawarma?" Tony asked, and the two IMF agents turned. The billionaire was still lying on his back. "There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it." He looked sideways at Ethan and Jane and frowned. "I don't know who the hell you are, but you're invited too."

Jane chuckled. Then she looked at Ethan. "Where's Benji and Brandt?"

"I saw Agent Brandt headed into a building about four blocks up," Steve told her.

"Your teammate is on the roof with the Black Widow," Thor told her. He looked over at Steve. "We have some business to attend to," he told the American hero.

Steve nodded, looking back at Stark Tower. "Yeah," he agreed. "Yeah we do." He looked at Ethan and Jane. "You guys are welcome to come. Far as I'm concerned, you deserve to see this through to the end."

"Thanks," Ethan said. "But we need to go find Brandt."

"Anybody heard from Clint?" Natasha's voice sounded in Steve's ear.

"Wherever they are, they're probably together," Steve said. He pointed. "That building, there."

Ethan and Jane took off at a run. "Natasha and…Benji?" Steve frowned. "They'll meet you there!" He turned to Thor. "Let's go find Loki."

"I could use a hand, guys," Tony said from the ground. But it was the Hulk who picked him up and set him, surprisingly gently, on his feet. He looked in the great green monster's eyes. "Thanks, big guy."

Maybe it was the fall, or the killer pain, but he swore he saw the Hulk smile.


	15. That's My Boys

"Is that my ears….or is something actually ringing?" Clint asked his brother as Brandt helped him get to his feet.

Brandt fumbled in his jeans pocket. "Yeah….my phone…forgot I even had it on me." He glanced at the ID. "Ethan," he said, and pressed SEND. "Hey."

"Where the hell are you?"

"The only building that doesn't have all its windows smashed out," Brandt offered. "Um….Seventeenth floor."

"Don't move, we're on our way." Ethan cut off the call, and Brandt shoved his phone in his pocket. "I won't tell them we were on twenty-five about ten minutes ago," he muttered, and Clint laughed. Brandt looked sideways at him, and Clint started an all-out giggle fit, which was contagious. They'd almost died. Again. The world had almost ended. But it didn't. That was damn funny. The two brothers were laughing their asses off leaning against each other in the stairwell when Ethan and Jane found them five minutes later.

Jane raised an eyebrow. "Did we miss something?" she asked Brandt.

He grinned. "Nothing you'll get," he assured her, shifting his brother's weight as Ethan stepped in to give him a hand. "Ah, Agents Ethan Hunt and Jane Carter, Agent Clint Barton, Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforce-"

"Shut up, Will," Clint cut him off with an eye roll. "SHIELD," he said. "Just SHIELD."

"I like that better," Jane said. "Nice to meet you. We've heard so much about you," she added with a challenging look at Brandt.

Brandt shook his head. "None of it good," he assured his brother with a grin.

"Then my reputation is still intact," Clint said. He looked at Ethan and Jane. "So you're the guys that keep my little brother in one piece, huh?"

"We try," Jane said dryly, and Clint smiled.

"Hawkeye, are you out there?" The voice was Natasha's, and Clint held up a hand to stop the group.

"Here," he said.

"Sit rep?"

"Almost in one piece," he said with a grin, and Brandt laughed. His teammates looked confused, and Brandt remembered they couldn't hear the whole conversation. His brother's eyes turned dark. "Hey, Tash….where's Loki?"

"We're on our way to go get him. You wanna join us?"

"Love to," Clint ground out. He turned to his brother. "Stark Tower."

"Aye aye, Cap," Brandt teased.

Somewhere on the street, he heard Steve Rogers say, "I heard that."

* * *

"He's um….well, he's sort of not what I expected," Benji said, as Natasha trained her gun on the unconscious god. "He looks a bit….well, normal, doesn't he?"

"About as normal as they come in our line of work," Natasha said, her eyes never leaving Loki. She heard the elevator ding, and her teammates stepped into the room. Benji caught sight of Brandt and waved. Brandt could almost hear him. _I'm standing in Tony Stark's living room_!

Natasha, for her part, stayed stoic as Clint shrugged off Brandt's arm and caught her eye. She watched him draw himself to his full height, even though she was sure he hurt like hell. She could see it, even if the others couldn't.

She'd almost lost him twice. But that was for later. "You want the honors?" she asked Clint.

"Hell yes," Clint said, drawing back an arrow. The Avengers and the IMF team crowded around Loki as Clint prodded him with a boot.

The first thing Loki saw was a silver arrow, and a pair of fierce brown eyes narrowed at him. He took in the Iron Man's glowing eyes, the soldier's stern gaze, the monstrosity's lopsided grin, the redhaired woman's pistol, aimed with deadly accuracy between his eyes, and his brother's own condescending look. Then he caught sight of the civilians in the room, all four of whom looked to be a force to be reckoned with.

He'd underestimated them. He'd underestimated them all. And they knew it.

"If it's all the same to you," he said, with a glance at Iron Man, "I think I'll have that drink now."

"The only place you are going is back to Asgard," Thor told his brother. "Where the Odinfather can deal with you as he sees fit."

"But first," Tony's metallic voice said, "Shawarma."

* * *

New York was in shambles. The Hulk now had another area of Manhattan destroyed under his belt.

Yet Tony Stark's shawarma restaurant was still standing. More or less.

Tony grinned. "Now _this_ is an adventure, boys. And...woman. Widow?' He looked at Natasha. 'What do you prefer?'

'I prefer food,' Natasha said.

'Explain this concept again?' Steve was asking.

'Dont have him explain it,' Bruce said. 'Let's just eat.'

'Yeah you worked up quite the appetite there huh?' Brandt teased him. 'You're two for five.'

'Harlem's not a borough, but…I'm thinking Staten Island next,' Bruce mused. "Nobody'd see it coming." Brandt grinned. Ethan, Jane & Benji had opted to head for the airport. Jane had to threaten Brandt with bodily harm before he promised he'd be there before the plane took off. There was something in her eyes that Brandt knew they'd have to address later.

'What is this Staten Island?' Thor asked.

Bruce and Brandt exchanged glances. 'Never mind,' Bruce said. 'Let's go. I don't know what shawarma is but at this point it could be a cardboard box and I'd eat it.' He stepped into the restaurant. 'And the Other Guy is mildly curious."

Thor turned to Brandt and Clint. 'Why would one eat cardboard?' he asked, confused.

The brothers looked at one another, then at Thor. 'Ask Tony,' they said together.

Thor nodded agreeably and followed the others into the restaurant. Clint was halfway inside when he noticed his brother hadn't moved.

He turned. "Will? You coming?"

Brandt shook his head. "I should go with my team," he said. "And you should be with yours."

"Hey, you guys saved the day too," Clint said. "What's that thing you always say-mission accomplished?"

Brandt laughed. "Yeah, but…" He shrugged.

Clint nodded. "Yeah, okay. I know. I understand." He sighed. 'One of these days you and I are gonna go golfing.'

Brandt cocked an eyebrow. 'Golfing?' He repeated.

Clint shrugged. 'Something normal. Fishing?'

Brandt smiled. 'I'd like that.'

"Possession by Norse God" qualifies me for some vacation time.' Clint said. 'So...I'll see you soon?'

Brandt gave his brother a hug. 'Yeah,' he said. 'See you soon.' It was a quirk. There were never any 'goodbyes' between them. He pulled back and Clint went inside. Brandt waited a moment, then answered his phone, which had been vibrating in his pocket. "Yeah, Ethan." He listened. "So, is LaGuardia still standing?" He heard Jane yelling something through the phone. "I heard her. Tell her I'm on my way." He glanced around. "As soon as I find a cab that's still upright, anyway."

* * *

_Four weeks later_

It was nice to see that there were some things that never changed. Brandt pulled up to the curb in a black Dodge pickup and sat for a moment, surveying the neighborhood. Tucker's dog was still barking its ass off. The Mitchells hadn't bothered to replace the leaning mailbox, a hazard from the newspaper boy checking out their daughter.

His father's truck was in the driveway. And somehow, he just _knew_ his mom had ravioli on the stove.

Someone banged on the window, and he jumped. He turned his head and grinned a matching grin to the one staring in at him. He hopped out. "Didn't even hear you pull up," he told Clint.

"You're getting soft, little brother," Clint teased. "Might have to trade in field work for a desk job."

"Oh God, not again," Brandt groaned. He closed the truck door and looked at his brother. "So…." He began.

"I'm okay," Clint said. "Tasha's been helping me….deal…and oddly enough, Bruce and Steve are helpful on that front too. Tony's been too busy ah…remodeling…with his girlfriend. Nobody's heard from Thor since he went back to Asgard. And I've been ignoring my pages from Fury." He winked, and Brandt smiled.

"And the head and back?"

"Well, I'm moving better, anyway," Clint replied. "Painkillers are beautiful things."

"I'm sure they are."

"What about you, Will?" Clint asked. "I mean, you got a helluva shock factor comin' into my world like you did."

Brandt thought about it. "I'm okay," he said. "Sometimes I wake up and I'm being chased by the Hulk, or I can hear Loki's voice in my head-"

"Yeah, been there," Clint muttered darkly.

"-but I'm okay. I'm dealing." He shrugged. "Just savin' the world, as usual."

Clint nodded. "Yeah, as usual."

They heard the front door open, and both turned. Laura Brandt was standing there, Donald behind her. "Boys!" Laura cried. Will and Clint met her halfway in the grass, where she wrapped her arms around them. "I didn't know you were coming home!"

She pulled back and looked at the two of them. Then she wrapped them in a hug again. Tightly.

_It's like she knows_.

They let her hold on. Will felt another set of hands and looked up to see their father had joined the bear hug on the lawn. He looked at them over the top of his wife's head. They both met their father's gaze and held it.

Apparently Mom wasn't the only one with good intuition. "That's my boys," he said proudly.

Their favorite words.


End file.
